Read Disturb in NROM Charge Trapping Non-Volatile Memory Device

We investigated threshold voltage (V
_T
) shifts during read operation of NROM devices in advanced non-volatile memory (NVM) process generations (75nm). For the first time it is demonstrated that channel-initiated secondary electron injection (CHISEL) mechanism is the main source of the "read disturb" experimental results in advanced process devices. This mechanism is generic to non-volatile memories (NVM) devices and must be minimized to avoid data corruption during read.