Recent advances in memory technology

In the last five years we have seen remarkable advances in the density of commodity memory devices, both NAND flash and DRAM. NAND flash has now migrated to the 1x-nm era, and DRAM is has reached the 2x-nm node. To achieve this level of integration the manufacturers have had to adopt both new materials and processes, and also were the first users of advanced lithographic techniques such as immersion lithography and double patterning. Chipworks, as a supplier of competitive intelligence to the semiconductor and electronics industries, monitors the evolution of chip processes as they come into commercial production. Chipworks has obtained parts from the leading edge manufacturers, and performed structural analyses to examine the features and manufacturing processes of the devices. The paper reviews some of the different flash and DRAM memory structures produced recently, and looks at the details of the memory cells.