Retention Reliability Improvement of SONOS Non-volatile Memory with N2O Oxidation Tunnel Oxide

Tunneling oxide engineering by ion implantation of nitrogen for 3D vertical silicon pillar SONOS flash memory

“…To improve tunnel oxide reliability, various nitridation technologies with nitrous oxide (N 2 O) and nitric oxide (NO) at high temperature as well as plasma nitridation have been reported. These processes provide higher immunity with the accumulation of incorporated nitrogen (N) atoms at the tunnel oxide and substrate interface [8][9][10][11]. Bandgap-engineered (BE)-SONOS to achieve both fast hole tunneling erase and good data retention has been proposed, which uses a BE tunneling dielectric stack O1/N1/O2 to replace the tunnel oxide in the conventional device [12][13][14].…”

Improved Retention Characteristic in Polycrystalline Silicon–Oxide–Hafnium Oxide–Oxide–Silicon-Type Nonvolatile Memory with Robust Tunnel Oxynitride

“…11,12) Various approaches to produce modified oxides have achieved varying degrees of success, such as NO, N 2 O, NH 3 , or plasma nitridation. [13][14][15][16] However, some studies have revealed that the amount and distribution of nitrogen atoms in the oxynitride must be optimized because an excessive or wrongly positioned peak nitrogen concentration would result in the deterioration of reliability. 17,18) If the nitrogen atoms accumulate at the oxynitride/substrate interface, it will result in device performance degradation.…”