Flexible hot-electron programming of flash memories

In this work, we present a new hot-electron programming scheme for nonvolatile memory cells that, by combining a positive source-bulk voltage and a ramped control gate voltage, achieves a programming regime where the drain current is virtually constant. The new method allows accurate control of the final threshold voltage and of the drain current which is determined by the slope of the gate voltage ramp and can thus be traded off with programming time over a wide range of values.