Detection and Classification of Single-Electron Jumps in Si Nanocrystal Memories

In this paper, we report a purposely designed instrumentation and a jump detection procedure for the measurement of single-electron phenomena in solid-state nonvolatile memories based on a silicon nanocrystal floating gate metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor. The stepwise evolution of the drain current of a memory cell after a ldquowriterdquo operation is monitored by means of a purposely designed low-noise acquisition system with a bandwidth of up to 10 kHz. The advantage of the measurement system background noise and bandwidth over a traditional semiconductor parameter analyzer performance is evident in the detection and classification of single-electron events.