Silicon nanocrystal non-volatile memory for embedded memory scaling

Development of an original model for the synthesis of silicon nanodots by Low Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition

“…This is due to the never-ending demand for higher integration in microelectronics, and to the unique physical properties of silicon nanodots (NDs) spontaneously formed on oxidised silicon during this stage [1][2]. Indeed the development of novel devices such as non-volatile memories (NVM) and single electron transistors (SET) has become possible thanks to size confinement effects and Coulomb blockade phenomena observed for ND structures [3][4][5].…”

Si and Ge nanocrystals for future memory devices

“…The last few years, significant advances have been made in NC fabrication (see, e.g., [2,3]) and prototype NCM-based products for low-power microcontroller applications have recently been demonstrated [4]. However, the NCM technologies developed to date still face the concern of producing high-density of uniformly distributed size-homogeneous NCs and hence, cannot avoid fluctuations in device performance and fail to exploit size-dependence effects [2,[5][6][7][8]. While more research is needed to overcome these limitations and other concerns related to the dielectric materials and device architecture [5][6][7], the NCM approach still competes with other charge storage (e.g.…”

“…Among the different technological routes explored the last few years for generating NCs in the gate oxide of MOS devices, two major techniques have been utilized, namely deposition in vacuum like low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD, see e.g. [5,6] and references therein), and ion beam synthesis (IBS) [23,24]. The latter technique has received substantial attention due to its flexibility, manufacturing advantages and full compatibility with standard CMOS technology.…”

Silicon Oxide Films Containing Amorphous or Crystalline Silicon Nanodots for Device Applications

“…Ones of them are metal-insulator-semiconductor (MIS) structures containing semiconductor nanocrystals in the insulator layer. In such structures nanocrystals serve as charge storage media replacing the floating gate in conventional memory field effect transistors (FETs) (Horváth&Basa, 2009;Lombardo et al, 2004;Steimle et al, 2007;Tiwari et al, 1995). The other ones are the phase-change memory structures (which are not subject of consideration in this chapter), where the channel layer itself is www.intechopen.com Quantum Dots -A Variety of New Applications 184 switched between nanocrystalline and amorphous state with high and low conductivity, respectively (Hudgens&Johnson, 2004).…”

“…An important advantage of the NVMs containing NCs is that they have shown a superior endurance at increased temperatures than the standard polysilicon floating gate NVMs and those using charge storage in natural traps. More detailed information on the principles of operation and non-volatile memories containing semiconductor or metal nanoparticles in various matrices can be found in a number of recent reviews [see for example (Horváth&Basa, 2009;Steimle et al, 2007;Tsoukalas et al, 2005).…”