O2 post deposition anneal of Al2O3 blocking dielectric for higher performance and reliability of TANOS Flash memory

TANOS Charge Trap Flash Approach (CTF) is a candidate to replace floating gate approach (FG) for sub-32 nm technology node. However the main challenge for TANOS is its poor retention characteristics. In this paper, we show that by performing an O
₂
anneal after Al
₂
O
₃
deposition the charge retention is considerably improved as well as the other memory characteristics: program, erase, endurance.