Electrical characterization of multilayered SiC nano-particles for application as tunnel barrier engineered non-volatile memory

Abstract

SiC nano-particles on tunnel layer with variable oxide thickness composed of SiO2 and Si3N4 layers were fabricated and their electrical properties were evaluated. The flat-band voltage shifts due to the memory effect of multilayered SiC nano-particles in the non-volatile memory (NVM) device with SiO2/Si3N4/SiO2, Si3N4/SiO2/Si3N4 and SiO2 tunnel layer were observed about 1.5, 1.4 and 0.2 V after the voltage sweep from 6 to 3 V under applied program/erase voltages at +/- 13 V for 10 ms, respectively. The program/erase speeds of ONO and NON tunnel layered devices were faster than that of the SiO2 tunnel layer device. The memory window of the NVM devices with ONO tunnel layers after applied program/erase bias at +/- 10 V for 500 ms was maintained about 1.6 V after 10(5) s. These results indicate that the ONO and NON tunnel barriers can provide a thin effective tunneling thickness for the fast P/E speeds and comparatively thick physical thickness for the long charge retention characteristic.