On the occurrence of few-electrons phenomena in ultra-scaled silicon nano-crystals memories

In this work, we present the single electron charging and discharging phenomena occurring at room temperature in an ultra-scaled Silicon nano-crystals memory. A deepen investigation of the impact of critical dimensions of the memory cell (i.e. active area and channel width and length) on the memory programming window and on the size of the current discontinuities (induced by the variation of one electron in the floating gate) is reported here. Poisson-Schroedinger simulations allowing for a good understanding of experimental results are also shown.