High endurance ultra-thin tunnel oxide for dynamic memory application

Ultra-thin tunnel oxide can conduct very high current through oxide via direct tunneling; charge-to-breakdown increases dramatically due to less oxide damage. These facts point to a possibility of using ultra-thin tunnel oxide in the floating-gate device structure for dynamic-memory applications. We chose MONOS structure in this study due to its immunity to defect-induced leakage and back-tunneling. The memory device exhibits fast WRITE/ERASE speed, high endurance, long data retention and non-destructive READ. Further improvements are expected through process optimization.

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