Reliability Aspects of a Floating Gate E2 PROM

This paper has discussed a number of E2PROM failure mechanisms for both erase/write cycling and data retention. It has been shown that Fowler-Nordheim tunneling used for programming does not affect data retention. Erase/write cycling has been shown to degrade device margins by only a small amount and is easily guardbanded. Erase/write cycling does contribute to a significant portion of the observed failure rate due to oxide breakdown under high field operation. Defect related charge loss has been shown to be similar to that observed in EPROMs. Finally, it has been shown that E2PROMs can perform reliably in applications requiring up to 10,000 erase/write cycles per byte.