Charge gain, NBTI recovery and random telegraph noise in localized-trapping NVM devices

Three different physical reliability processes - charge gain (CG) in EEPROM nonvolatile memory devices, the recovery of negative bias temperature instability (NBTI-R) and random telegraph noise (RTN) are linked together to interpret the CG effect. CG in nitride trapping devices is shown to exhibit discrete detrapping steps similar to NBTI recovery in MOS devices. The height of the RTN-like steps of the CG process can be tuned by modulating the electric field that controls the point of hole injection during the negative erase bias of the device.