Improved retention and cycling characteristics of MONOS memory using charge-trapping engineering

Abstract

The shallow trap energy in SONOS Charge-Trapping Flash (CTF) is the fundamental challenge for required good retention, especially at elevated temperatures. Although the high temperature retention can be improved by BE-SONOS, this is traded off the slow erase speed. To address these issues, we have fabricated a new Charge-Trapping-Engineered Flash (CTEF) using deep trapping high- dielectric to replace Si3N4. At l500C, the CTEF device shows a large 5.6 V initial memory window and a 3.8 V 10-year extrapolated retention for 4-bits/cell MLC, under very fast 100 sand ±16 V program/erase condition. © 2009 IEEE.