Pulsed tunnel programming of nonvolatile memories

This paper investigates the use of Fowler-Nordheim tunneling for Flash memories programming looking for a good tradeoff between applied voltage (to relax requirements for on-chip circuitry), program time and oxide stress-induced leakage current (SILC) degradation. Exploiting the results of a recent study of trap dynamics under pulsed tunnel conditions, it is shown that by means of a small number of relatively high voltage pulses, memories featuring oxide thickness of 7 nm can be programmed in about 20 (mu)s with smaller SILC degradation than commonly achieved with programming times in the ms range.