AVS 49th International Symposium
    Processing at the Nanoscale Thursday Sessions
       Session PN+SS-ThM

Paper PN+SS-ThM8
Charge Trapping in Oxide-Nitride-Oxide-Silicon Structures Studied by Electrostatic Force Microscopy

Thursday, November 7, 2002, 10:40 am, Room C-109

Session: Patterning and Functionalization
Presenter: S.-D. Tzeng, National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan, ROC
Authors: S.-D. Tzeng, National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan, ROC
Y.-C. You, National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan, ROC
S. Gwo, National Tsing-Hua University, Taiwan, ROC
Correspondent: Click to Email
A novel approach of fabricating oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (ONOS) charge storage structures is demonstrated by using the scanning-probe-induced oxidation process under ambient conditions. During the probe oxidation process, both positive and negative charges are injected and trapped inside the ONOS cell. By means of quantitative electrical force microscopy (EFM) measurements, we have investigated the trapping behavior of the probe-oxidation-induced charges. We found that the retention time of the negative charge is much shorter than the positive one. By measuring the decay lifetimes of these trapped charges after annealing at different temperatures, we have determined the trapping energies of both types of charges. We also found that, after high-temperature annealing, these trapped charges can be detrapped. The resulting ONOS cell can be used as a nonvolatile memory element with write/erase capability locally controlled by a biased scanning probe tip.