Improvement in retention reliability of SONOS nonvolatile memory devices by two-step high temperature deuterium anneals

Author

Bu, Jiankang ; White, Marvin H.

Author_Institution

Microelectron. Res. Lab., Lehigh Univ., Bethlehem, PA, USA

fYear

2001

fDate

2001

Firstpage

52

Lastpage

56

Abstract

The deterioration of the Si-SiO₂ interface is associated with the degradation of long term retention in polysilicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS) nonvolatile semiconductor memory (NVSM) devices. Two-step high temperature deuterium anneals, applied in SONOS device fabrication for the first time, improve the endurance characteristics and retention reliability over traditional hydrogen anneals. Electrical characterization shows deuterium-annealed SONOS devices have nearly one order of magnitude longer projected retention time than hydrogen-annealed devices after 10⁷ erase/write cycles at 85°C to provide an extrapolated 0.5 V detection window. In this paper, we introduce the annealing process along with experiment results

Keywords

annealing; deuterium; elemental semiconductors; extrapolation; integrated circuit reliability; random-access storage; silicon; silicon compounds; 0.5 V; 85 C; D; SONOS NVSM device; SONOS device fabrication; SONOS nonvolatile memory devices; Si-SiO₂ interface deterioration; Si-SiO₂-Si₃N₄-SiO₂-Si; annealing process; deuterium-annealed SONOS devices; electrical characterization; endurance characteristics; erase/write cycles; extrapolated detection window; hydrogen anneals; hydrogen-annealed devices; long term retention degradation; polysilicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon nonvolatile semiconductor memory; projected retention time; retention reliability; two-step high temperature deuterium anneals; Annealing; CMOS technology; Degradation; Deuterium; Fabrication; Hydrogen; Nonvolatile memory; SONOS devices; Silicon; Temperature;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Reliability Physics Symposium, 2001. Proceedings. 39th Annual. 2001 IEEE International

Conference_Location

Orlando, FL

Print_ISBN

0-7803-6587-9

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/RELPHY.2001.922881

Filename

922881