Detection of Single-Electron Transfer Events and Capacitance Measurements in Submicron Floating-Gate Memory Cells

A simple technique for monitoring floating gate (FG) charge gain/loss with elementary charge accuracy is proposed. The technique does not require nanoscale FG or low temperature and can be applied to virtually any submicron FG memory cell. The potential applications include precise capacitance measurements, as well as analysis of program, erase, disturb and data retention characteristics of FG memory cells in extremely low range of FG current (down to 10
^-23
A and below)