Extraction of nitride trap density from stress induced leakage current in silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon flash memory

Abstract

The authors propose a technique to extract a silicon nitride trap density from stress induced leakage current in a polycrystalline silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon flash memory cell. An analytical model based on the Frenkel-Poole emission is developed to correlate a nitride trap density with stress induced leakage current. The extracted nitride trap density is 7.0x10(12) cm(-2) eV(-1). They find that nitride trapped charges have a rather uniform distribution in an energy range of measurement (similar to 0.2 eV). (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.