Formation of silicon germanium nitride layer with distributed charge storage elements

Abstract

The formation of silicon germanium nitride (SiGeN) with distributed charge storage elements is proposed in this work. A large memory window is observed due to the retainable dangling bonds inside the SiGeN gate stack layer. The nonvolatile memory device with the high-temperature oxidized SiGeN stack layer exhibits 2 V threshold voltage shift under 7 V write operation, which is sufficient for a memory device to define the signal "0" and "1." Also, the manufacture technology using the sequent high-temperature oxidation of the a-Si layer acting as the blocking oxide is proposed to enhance the performance of nonvolatile memory devices. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.