High-endurance ultra-thin tunnel oxide in MONOS device structure for dynamic memory application

Author

Wann, Clement H. ; Hu, Chenming

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., California Univ., Berkeley, CA, USA

Volume

16

Issue

11

fYear

1995

Firstpage

491

Lastpage

493

Abstract

Ultra-thin tunnel oxide can conduct very high current through oxide via direct tunneling, and charge-to-breakdown increases dramatically due to less oxide damage. These facts point to a possibility of using thin tunnel oxide in the floating-gate device structure for dynamic memory applications. We have chosen MONOS structure in this study due to its immunity to pinhole-induced leakage and back-tunneling. The memory device exhibits fast WRITE/ERASE speed, high-endurance, long data retention and non-destructive READ. Further improvements are expected through process optimization.<>

Keywords

DRAM chips; MIS devices; MOS memory circuits; insulating thin films; nondestructive readout; tunnelling; MONOS device structure; charge-to-breakdown; direct tunneling; dynamic memory application; floating-gate device structure; high endurance; long data retention; nondestructive READ; ultra-thin tunnel oxide; Capacitors; Design for quality; EPROM; Insulation; MONOS devices; Nonvolatile memory; Random access memory; Silicon; Tunneling; Voltage;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Device Letters, IEEE

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0741-3106

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/55.468277

Filename

468277