Nonvolatile Memory With Ge/Si Heteronanocrystals as Floating Gate

Abstract

A p-channel memory with Ge/Si heteronanocrystals (HNCs) as the floating gate was fabricated and tested. The nanocrystals (NCs) were synthesized by low-pressure chemical vapor deposition of Si NCs followed by selective growth of Ge on top of Si. Both hole and electron storages were characterized in Ge/Si HNC memory. Fowler-Nordheim and hot carrier injection programming operations were studied. Compared to Si NC memory, enhanced memory performances were demonstrated in Ge/Si HNC memory in terms of longer retention, larger storage capability, and faster programming.Index Terms-Ge/Si self-assembly, MOSFET, nanocrystal (NC) memory.

Nonthermal Plasma Synthesis of Core/Shell Quantum Dots: Strained Ge/Si Nanocrystals

“…Extensive work on Ge/Si nanowires (NWs) has leveraged the 1D hole gas resulting from this type II alignment to investigate single Ge/Si NW field-effect transistors, Ge/Si NW Josephson Junctions, and Ge/Si NW qubits . Additionally, surface-grown Si-capped Ge QDs have been investigated for improved metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) memory structures, photovoltaic devices, and thermoelectrics . Importantly, for these Ge/Si nanostructures, the outer Si layer provides a protective barrier against the formation of an inferior Ge oxide and may also be chemically passivated to prevent oxide formation entirely …”

Effect of annealing time on memory behavior of MOS structures based on Ge nanoparticles

“…In this sense, the devices for non-volatile memories (NVM) floating gate, especially conventional flash memories type, stand out as the most demanded at the market [1]. Because of the trend towards miniaturization in order to obtain better performance, higher storage densities, faster data transfer rates and low operating voltages; scale problems have been observed in these conventional memories [2][3][4]. These are the result of the scalability limitations tunneling dielectric, located between the bulk and the floating gate, and the effects of floating gate interference among adjacent cells.…”