Charging effect in germanium nanocrystals embedded in a SiO2 matrix

Recently, Ge nanocluster or nanocrystal for the next-generation non-volatile memory (NVM) devices has received much attention. Although there is enormous research on the Ge-nanocrystal based NVM, there are few studies on the charging effect on the current conduction in the gate stack. As revealed by this work, the charging has a significant impact on current conduction in the gate stack and thus it may affect the NVM performance. This paper discusses in detail the effect of charging in nc-Ge.