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In this paper, we present the first-ever commercially available embedded Microcontrollers built on 90nm-node with silicon nanocrystal memories that has intrinsic capability of exceeding 500K program/erase cycles. We also show that the cycling performance across temperature (-40C to 125C) is very well behaved even while maintaining high performance that meets or exceeds the requirements of consumer, industrial, and automotive markets. In specific EEPROM implementation, such high endurance is capable of delivering in excess of 200M data updates. In addition, we also demonstrate that the nanocrystal flash memory is highly scalable to the next generation nodes and the scaling can be accomplished without degradation of program/erase speed, endurance and reliability. ( IntroductionRecently we announced the launch and qualification of high performance, low-power embedded 32-bit microcontrollers based on either ARM® Cortex™ -M4 core or ColdFire™ cores that are built using NC-based embedded flash (referred to as TFS for Thin Film Storage). The mixed-signal low-power microcontroller families have memories for with flash memory sizes ranging from 256Kb to 8Mb [1,2]. In addition, the unique capability of TFS has enabled inclusion of fully configurable embedded EEPROM functionality called 'FlexMemory.' With appropriate trade-off between endurance and memory density, the FlexMemory is capable of delivering as many as 10M data update operations when the intrinsic flash endurance is 10K. However, there has been an increasing demand for eFlash that can cover from low-end to high-end products, but capable of high flash endurance (≥ 100K) and reliability for markets, such as, automotive and smartcard applications. Evaluation of Kinetis Microcontrollers demonstrate that nanocrystal flash is intrinsically capable of achieving 500K+ cycling performance, and we also show reliable performance with extended endurance capability (≥ 100K) across temperature (-40C to 125C). With such substantially enhanced endurance capability of nanocrystal memories, FlexMemory can deliver an excess of 200M updates when appropriately configured.

In this paper, an investigation of the DC characteristics of 0.25 jim indium-implanted MOSFET's concerning on indium implantation induced damages is presented. The experimental data indicates that the devices with indium-implanted channel tend to show increases in device leakage current, which could be attributed the indium implantation induced damages. The impact of the Indium implantation on the degradation of device performance was investigated through detailed studies of device I-V characteristics, and the measurement results are found to correlate well with the variations in the process conditions. Our findings indicate that the elimination of the implantation-induced damages by post implantation annealing is particularly important for deep sub-micron MOSFET's using indium implantation.