The future of flash memory: Is floating gate technology doomed to lose the race?

Since the very beginning of the flash memory era, the market has been dominated by the floating gate technology. However, as floating gate flash continues along a very steep scaling path, more and more barriers start to appear, limiting further scaling possibilities of the technology. At the same time, other concepts are preparing to take over. This paper concentrates on the prospect of high-k materials to extend floating gate scaling and explores the possibilities and promises these materials offer to further extend the floating gate concept as the dominant flash technology.