Demonstration of a flash memory cell with 55 Å EOT silicon nitride tunnel dielectric

Author

Melik-Martirosian, Ashot ; Ma, T.P. ; Wang, X.W. ; Guo, X. ; Widdershoven, F.P. ; Wolters, D.R. ; van der Wal, V.J.D. ; van Duuren, M.J.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Appl. Phys., Yale Univ., New Haven, CT, USA

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

138

Lastpage

141

Abstract

The authors demonstrate for the first time a flash memory cell with 55 Å Equivalent Oxide Thickness (EOT) silicon nitride tunnel dielectric. Their preliminary results show that this cell has good endurance characteristics and high program/erase speed. These results suggest that a high-quality JVD silicon nitride can be used as a long term solution to replace the tunnel oxide and to extend the scaling limit of tunnel dielectric in flash memory devices beyond the year 2010

Keywords

dielectric thin films; flash memories; integrated memory circuits; semiconductor-insulator boundaries; silicon compounds; tunnelling; vapour deposited coatings; 55 A; Si-SiN; SiN tunnel dielectric; endurance characteristics; flash memory cell; high erase speed; high programming speed; high-quality JVD SiN; jet vapour deposited SiN; tunnel dielectric scaling limit extension; Channel hot electron injection; Charge carrier processes; Dielectrics; Electron traps; Flash memory cells; Leakage current; Nonvolatile memory; Silicon; Space vector pulse width modulation; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

VLSI Technology, Systems, and Applications, 2001. Proceedings of Technical Papers. 2001 International Symposium on

Conference_Location

Hsinchu

ISSN

1524-766X

Print_ISBN

0-7803-6412-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/VTSA.2001.934502

Filename

934502