High-Reliability Trigate Poly-Si Channel Flash Memory Cell With Si-Nanocrystal Embedded Charge-Trapping Layer

This letter introduces a polycrystalline-silicon nanowire (NW) thin-film nonvolatile memory (NVM) with a self-assembled silicon-nanocrystal (Si-NC) embedded charge-trapping (CT) layer. This process is simple and compatible with conventional CMOS processes. Experimental results indicate that this NW NVM exhibits high reliability due to a deep-quantum-well structure and immunity of enhanced electric field underneath a disk-shaped Si-NC. After 10 000 P/E cycles, the memory window loss of the NVM with a Si-NC embedded CT layer is less than 12% until 104 s at 150 °C. Accordingly, a poly-Si thin-film transistor with a Si-NC embedded CT layer is highly promising for NVM applications.