Nonvolatile memory with molecule-engineered tunneling barriers

摘要

We report a novel field-sensitive tunneling barrier by embedding C60 in SiO2for nonvolatile memory applications. C60 is a better choice than ultra-smallnanocrystals due to its monodispersion. Moreover, C60 provides accessibleenergy levels to prompt resonant tunneling through SiO2 at high fields.However, this process is quenched at low fields due to HOMO-LUMO gap and largecharging energy of C60. Furthermore, we demonstrate an improvement of more thanan order of magnitude in retention to program/erase time ratio for a metalnanocrystal memory. This shows promise of engineering tunnel dielectrics byintegrating molecules in the future hybrid molecular-silicon electronics.