Manipulation of periodic Coulomb blockade oscillations in ultra-scaled memories by single electron charging of silicon nanocrystal floating gates

Ultra-scaled silicon nanocrystal memories fabricated on a silicon-on-insulator substrate exhibit very periodic Coulomb blockade oscillations at 4.2 K. We control the phase of those oscillations by charging and discharging the floating gate with a single electron. We can distinguish between resonances due to the whole channel area covered by the gate and impurity levels localized in the access regions and less coupled to the gate. Comparison with a reference device without nanocrystals is also reported.