Influence of silicon nanocrystal size and density on the performance of non-volatile memory arrays

Silicon nanocrystal memories offer opportunities for voltage scaling and process simplification for embedded non-volatile memories. While electrically isolated nanocrystals mitigate charge loss through oxide defects, the impact of nanocrystal size and density characteristics as well as statistical fluctuations on memory arrays is not well understood. This paper shows that the memory window and high temperature data retention are roughly insensitive over a broad range of nanocrystal characteristics. Further, data from mega-bit arrays shows that nanocrystal coalescence effects are small.