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This paper is written to review the development of critical research on the overall impact of tunnel oxide nitridation (TON) with the aim to mitigate reliability issues due to incessant technology scaling of charge storage NVM devices. For more than 30 years, charge storage non-volatile memory (NVM) has been critical in the evolution of intelligent electronic devices and continuous development of integrated technologies. Technology scaling is the primary strategy implemented throughout the semiconductor industry to increase NVM density and drive down average cost per bit. In this paper, critical reliability challenges and key innovative technical mitigation methods are reviewed. TON is one of the major candidates to replace conventional oxide layer for its superior quality and reliability performance. Major advantages and caveats of key TON process techniques are discussed. The impact of TON on quality and reliability performance of charge storage NVM devices is carefully reviewed with emphasis on major advantages and drawbacks of top and bottom nitridation. Physical mechanisms attributed to charge retention and V(t) instability phenomenon are also reviewed in this paper.

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Technological scaling of charge trap device has become significantly more challenging due to two major physical limits revealed by International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) 2011, i.e., (1) neighboring bit interference due to consistent shrinking in design floor space; (2) balancing act of ensuring sufficient number of electrons in shrinking storage layer to maintain stable threshold voltage (V(t)) against various V(t) instability mechanisms. Nitride based charge trap flash (CTF) is one of the better candidates to replace floating gate (FG) flash as the mainstream flash memory technology due to its inherent immunity to point defects and better device scalability. However, post cycled V(t) instability in the form of V(t) distribution shift and broadening of programmed/erased cells is still genuine reliability concerns for nitride based CTF devices. This is because the shift and broadening of V(t) distribution could degrade the operating window and thus caused premature failures of the devices. V(t) instability of nitride based CTF memory inevitably introduces statistical fluctuations in V(t) distribution of nitride based CTF which is detrimental to its long-term data retention performance. The scope of this review paper focuses on critical reliability challenges of future development of nitride based CTF development with emphasis on cell level V(t) instability mechanisms. Our review on recent findings of V(t) instability mechanisms are useful references for future development of nitride based CTF devices.

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