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

Abstract

High-performance floating gate memory devices of Si nanocrystal (NC) dots on HfO2 gate oxide were fabricated at temperatures below 400°C. A large counterclockwise hysteresis of 5.2V, at an applied voltage of +6V, and a stored charge density of 6×1012cm−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 SiO2 tunneling layer. Advantages in terms of scaling for a high-performance and stable reliability memory device are confirmed.