A shielded substrate injector MOS (SSIMOS) EEPROM cell

An efficient, low voltage EEPROM cell is described which occupies an area of 135 µm². The device uses Fowler-Nordheim tunneling of electrons between the floating gate and the device channel region and positions the control gate to shield the remaining portion of the floating gate from the substrate. The cell can be programmed in 10 ms with a nominal write voltage of 16V and erase voltage of 12V. The write/erase endurance of the cell is in excess of 500,000 cycles and the read retention has been shown to be greater than 10 years.