Edge and percolation effects on VT window in nanocrystal memories

We present results of 3D Monte Carlo simulation of nanocrystal memory cells, investigating the impact of edge and percolation effects on the achievable threshold voltage window. While edge effects reduce the performance for narrow cells, percolation can play a beneficial role for W scaling, but is critical when scaling L. To reduce edge effects, a structure with non-overlapped trenches is proposed and investigated, showing that it can improve the performance by about 20% in terms of σΔVT/ΔVT.