A Novel Non-Destructive Silicon-on-Insulator Nonvolatile Memory - LDRD 99-0750 Final Report
Defects in silicon-on-insulator (SOI) buried oxides are normally considered deleterious to device operation. Similarly, exposing devices to hydrogen at elevated temperatures often can lead to radiation-induced charge buildup. However, in this work, we take advantage of as-processed defects in SOI buried oxides and moderate temperature hydrogen anneals to generate mobile protons in the buried oxide to form the basis of a ''protonic'' nonvolatile memory. Capacitors and fully-processed transistors were fabricated. SOI buried oxides are exposed to hydrogen at moderate temperatures using a variety of anneal conditions to optimize the density of mobile protons. A fast ramp cool down anneal was found to yield the maximum number of mobile protons. Unfortunately, we were unable to obtain uniform mobile proton concentrations across a wafer. Capacitors were irradiated to investigate the potential use of protonic memories for space and weapon applications. Irradiating under a negative top-gate bias or with no applied bias was observed to cause little degradation in the number of mobile protons. However, irradiating to a total dose of 100 krad(SiO{sub 2}) under a positive top-gate bias caused approximately a 100% reduction in the number of mobile protons. Cycling capacitors up to 10{sup 4} cycles had little effect on the switching characteristics. No change in the retention characteristics were observed for times up to 3 x 10{sup 4} s for capacitors stored unbiased at 200 C. These results show the proof-of-concept for a protonic nonvolatile memory. Two memory architectures are proposed for a protonic non-destructive, nonvolatile memory.
- Research Organization:
- Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States); Sandia National Lab. (SNL-CA), Livermore, CA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- US Department of Energy (US)
- DOE Contract Number:
- AC04-94AL85000
- OSTI ID:
- 14811
- Report Number(s):
- SAND99-2797; TRN: AH200130%%96
- Resource Relation:
- Other Information: PBD: 1 Nov 1999
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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