Thickness dependence of Al2O3/HfO2/Al2O3 stacked tunneling layers on gadolinium oxide nanocrystal nonvolatile memory

Jer Chyi Wang*, Chia Hsin Chen, Chih Ting Lin

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal Article peer-review

3 Scopus citations

Abstract

Characteristics of Gd2O3-NC memories with multiple tunneling layers of Al2O3/HfO2/Al2O3 (AHA) have been investigated. It can be found that the Gd2O3-NC memory with thin bottom and thin top Al2O3 film of AHA stacked tunneling layers exhibits superior programming and erasing (P/E) properties, respectively. Compared with the memory with SiO2 tunneling layer, the retention characteristics of Gd2O3-NC memories with AHA stacked tunneling layers are significantly improved. In addition, for the memories with AHA stacked tunneling layers, the trapping energy level (Et) of shallow-trap (ST) electron loss is decreased but that of deep-trap (DT) electron loss is increased due to some shallow traps within HfO2 film and the midgap interface states at HfO2/Si interface respectively. Further, the dependence of AHA stacked layer thickness on memory characteristics can be explained by the band engineering of tunneling layer. The Gd2O3-NC memories with AHA stacked tunneling layers can sustain a stable memory window of more than 1.6 V after a P/E cycling test of 104 times.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)52-56
Number of pages5
JournalMicroelectronic Engineering
Volume138
DOIs
StatePublished - 20 04 2015

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
©2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • Gadolinium oxide
  • Nanocrystal
  • Nonvolatile memory
  • Stacked tunneling layers
  • Trapping energy level

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