Nonvolatile memory devices with colloidal, 1.0 nm silicon nanoparticles : principles of operation, fabrication, measurements, and analysis

[摘要] (cont.) Energy band analysis was used to understand the nature of charging, hole-type versus electron-type and pure hole-type charging was shown to occur due to the characteristics of ultra-small silicon nanoparticles: large energy gap, large charging energy, and consequently small electron affinity. The retention time behavior of the 1.0 nm nanoparticle device was shown to be reduced due to a reduced valence band-offset with SiO2, however the programming time is shown to be dramatically reduced over that of conventional bulk devices. Quantum mechanical tunneling calculations were used to explore and predict routes for increasing the retention behavior by modulating the tunneling distance and experimental devices based on these calculations were fabricated in the SiO2 system to study experimentally directly these dependencies.

[发布机构] Massachusetts Institute of Technology