Program/Erase Characteristics of Amorphous Gallium Indium Zinc Oxide Nonvolatile Memory

Currently, both high-density 3-D stacking nonvolatile (NV) memory and embedded NV memory in advanced systems on panel (SOPs) urgently demand the assistance of new and functional transition metal-oxide materials. This is to overcome serious fabrication issues encountered in the use of conventional Si or poly-crystalline Si materials, as well as to increase storage density with lower process cost. This paper reports the fully functional NV memory structure operated by an ionic amorphous oxide semiconductor with a wide energy band gap (> 3.0 eV) in a Ga₂O₃-In₂O₃-ZnO (GIZO) system under low process temperature (< 400degC) while being combined with various metal-oxide materials of Al₂O₃, GIZO, and Al₂O₃ as the electron charge´s tunneling, storage, and blocking layers, respectively. The different methods of memory programs and, especially, the unique erase characteristics caused by a much wider band gap than Si were intensively being investigated, and as a result, excellent electrical results of a large program/erase window over 3.8 V at a pulse time of 10 ms are achieved.