Enhancing memory efficiency of Si nanocrystal floating gate memories with high-κ gate oxides

摘要

High-performance floating gate memory devices of Si nanocrystal (NC) dots on HfO_2 gate oxide were fabricated at temperatures below 400 ℃. A large counterclockwise hysteresis of 5.2 V, at an applied voltage of +6 V, and a stored charge density of 6 X 10~(12) cm~(-2) were observed. Moreover, the smaller band offset of the high-κ tunneling layer resulted in higher charge tunneling probabilities towards the Si NC dots than those observed with a SiO_2 tunneling layer. Advantages in terms of scaling for a high-performance and stable reliability memory device are confirmed.