Impact of few electron phenomena on floating-gate memory reliability

In this paper we give a quantitative evaluation of the intrinsic reliability limits of floating gate (FG) memories in the deca-nanometer range, due to the reduction of collective phenomena and to the dominance of single electron stochastic behaviours. A new model that quantitatively predicts the intrinsic dispersions of the memory retention time and programming window is proposed. Experimental results obtained on ultra-scaled memory devices (down to 30nm × 30nm), with either continuous poly-Si or Si-nanocrystal FG, are also presented. Finally, extrapolations on the intrinsic reliability limits of future generations of Flash memories are done.