Detailed Comparisons of Program, Erase and Data Retention Characteristics between P+- and N+-Poly SONOS NAND Flash Memory

• Main Authors: Victor Chao-Wei Kuo, Chih-Ming Chao, Chih-Kai Kang, Li-Wei Liu, Tzung-Bin Huang, Liang-Tai Kuo, Shi-Hsien Chen, Houng-Chi Wei, Hann-Ping Hwang, Pittikoun, S.
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Chaos; Character generation; Electronic mail; Electrons; Fabrication; Nonvolatile memory; Silicon; SONOS devices; Temperature; Threshold voltage
• ISSN: 1087-4852; 2576-9154
• DOI: 10.1109/MTDT.2006.10

In this paper, one of the future nonvolatile memory candidates, SONOS with p + -poly gate, has been fully characterized in cell program/erase operation and data retention performance. Novel source-side injection programming and F-N erase schemes have been utilized on both n + - and p + -poly gate, and its characteristics are very satisfactory and can be easily used as a state-of-the-art flash memory. For data retention, our experimental result shows p + -poly does have a slower charge decay rate than does n + -poly gate. This is because of the work function difference between n + - and p + -poly gate that causes the different amount of trapped electrons between two of them. We also predict the charge loss characteristics with various baking temperature for n + - and p + -poly gate, which can tell us the concrete threshold voltage at any read delay time instead of the traditional and inaccurate long time projection from short time status