Nonvolatile nanocrystal floating gate memory with NON tunnel barrier

The nanocrystal floating gate flash memory has a potential advantage in high-density floating gate memory for its superior scalability over its conventional structure. However, the retention and small sensing window have remained as the main issues for practical applications. In this work, we propose a nitride/oxide/nitride (NON) tunnel barrier, which is more sensitive to the gate bias than the uniform oxide barrier, and present real nonvolatile memory with a 1 V window after 10 years at 85/spl deg/C with programming at 8 V, 10 /spl mu/s and erasing at -8 V, loops.