inexorable.. .as microprocessor speeds pass two gigahertz, semiconductor manufacturers must wring all the available microprocessor speed from existing processes by any means possible. These means include designed experimentation and analysis of tightly controlled processes, many of which are approaching physical limits. Some questions an engineer must face when confronted with optimizing a 400-operation process is: At which operation to begin, and what factors in that operation influence what responses in the process? Then, after defined optimization projects have been completed: Have all the available opportunities for optimization been exhausted?

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

y = -0.0857x 2 + 0.8761x + 0.0414 0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 0 1 2 3 4 5 O dose(1E15/cm^2) Oxide thk(nm) Figure 1. Oxide thickness formed on the top of poly after 15 second anneal at 950°C vs. oxygen implant dose. Oxygen implant energy was 1KeV. Oxide thickness was measured by ARXPS.Abstract-We report a new approach to utilize oxygen implantation on the top of the floating gate (FG) to improve the cell performance of a sub-50 nm NAND flash memory cell. This method was used to form a thin oxide layer only on the top of the FG but not on the sidewalls. It also rounded the corners of the FG. As a result, the leakage current between FG and control gate (CG) was reduced without sacrificing the gate coupling ratio (GCR). With this approach we improved V t_sat_program and V t_sat_erase without degrading V g V t_program and V g V t_erase on real Si.