Charge trapping memory cell with high speed erase

Abstract

The invention discloses a charge trapping memory cell with high speed erase including a charge trapping element that is separated from a metal or metal compound gate through a blocking layer and separated from a semiconductor substrate comprising a channel through a processing tunneling dielectric material. The blocking layer is a material having a high dielectric constant, such as aluminum oxide. The metal or metal compound gate is such as platinum metal gate. Fast program and erase speeds with memory window as great as 7 V are achieved by the charge trapping memory cell.

Description

technical field [0001] The present invention relates to flash memory technology, and more particularly to a scalable charge trapping memory technology suitable for high speed erase and program operations. Background technique [0002] Flash memory (flash memory) is a type of non-volatile integrated circuit memory technology. Traditional flash memory uses floating gate memory cells. As the integration level of memory devices increases, the floating gate memory cells become closer together, making mutual interference of charges stored in adjacent floating gates gradually becoming a problem. Therefore, the ability to increase the integration level of the flash memory based on the floating gate memory cell is limited. Another type of memory cell used in flash memory is a charge trapping memory cell that utilizes a dielectric charge trapping layer instead of a floating gate. The charge-trapping memory cell uses a dielectric charge-trapping material, which does not cause interfe...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

However, the problem of erase saturation continues to limit the operating variables of the device

Also, as device size shrinks, it is expected that the issue of erase saturation will become more pronounced

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