Characterizing damage to thin oxides induced during programming floating trap non-volatile semiconductor memory devices

New methods for injecting and tunneling holes and electrons into the nitride charge storage layer in non-volatile semiconductor memory (NVSM) devices were investigated. These devices store holes and electrons in traps in a nitride layer in the gate dielectric. The programming mechanisms are Fowler-Nordheim tunneling, channel hot electron (CHE) injection, hot hole injection (HHI), and direct tunneling (DT). All measurements are performed on transistors with a gate dielectric composed of a 3.5 nm tunnel oxide, 1.5 nm silicon-nitride, and a 1.7 nm blocking oxide. Charge pumping measurements are employed to characterize the interface trap density of fresh devices and monitor the generation of the new interface traps during erase/write operations.