Extreme ultra-violate exposure induced damages on non-volatile memories

Abstract

The impact of extreme ultra-violate (EUV) exposure induced damages on the characteristics of Si-Oxide-Nitride-Oxide-Si (SONOS) memory and nano-crystal (NC) memory are investigated. In SONOS memory, the erase speed slows down and the endurance degrades severely due to the EUV induced deep-level traps in the dielectric stack and can not recover after 600°C annealing. The NC memory exhibits much better EUV radiation tolerance than the SONOS memory. This work suggests that the EUV lithography could be a potential solution for advanced NC memories without reliability issue.