The effects of extreme-ultraviolet (EUV)-irradiationinduced damage on the characteristics of a silicon-oxide-nitrideoxide-silicon (SONOS) memory device are investigated. After EUV irradiation, changes in the memory window and program/ erase speed indicate the generation of positive charges and new traps. Retention performance degrades after high-dose irradiation, which indicates that the tunneling layer is damaged. Endurance performance degrades severely because the damage in the blocking oxide results in serious electron back injection after cycling operations. These defects cannot be recovered after 600 • C annealing. It is recommended that in-process high-dose EUV irradiation on a SONOS stack after a front-end-of-line process should be avoided.Index Terms-Extreme ultraviolet lithography (EUVL), nonvolatile memory (NVM), radiation damage, silicon-oxide-nitrideoxide-silicon (SONOS) memory.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.