A study of hot-hole injection during programming drain disturb in flash memories

Author

Ielmini, Daniele ; Ghetti, Andrea ; Spinelli, Alessandro S. ; Visconti, Angelo

Author_Institution

Dipt. di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy

Volume

53

Issue

4

fYear

2006

fDate

4/1/2006 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

668

Lastpage

676

Abstract

Program disturbs in NOR-type Flash arrays significantly degrade the tunnel oxide by hot-hole injection (HHI) induced by band-to-band tunneling at the drain overlap. This paper provides a comprehensive experimental and modeling analysis of HHI in Flash memories under program-disturb conditions. Carrier-separation measurements on arrays of Flash memories with contacted floating-gate (FG) allows for a direct investigation of hole-initiated impact ionization and HHI. A Monte Carlo (MC) model is used to simulate carrier multiplication and injection into the FG. After validating the MC model against experimental data for both secondary electron generation and HHI, the model is used to provide further insight into the hole-injection mechanism.

Keywords

Monte Carlo methods; charge injection; flash memories; hot carriers; integrated circuit modelling; tunnelling; Monte Carlo model; NOR flash arrays; band-to-band tunneling; carrier injection; carrier multiplication; carrier-separation measurements; flash memories; floating gate; hot carriers; hot hole injection; impact ionization; Channel hot electron injection; Charge carrier processes; Degradation; Flash memory; Hot carriers; Impact ionization; Monte Carlo methods; Nonvolatile memory; Tunneling; Voltage; Flash memories; Monte Carlo (MC) modeling; hot carriers; reliability modeling;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TED.2006.870280

Filename

1610894