Scaling tunneling oxide to 50Å in floating-gate logic NVM at 65nm and beyond

Logic NVM using I/O gate oxide as storage floating gate dielectric developed in baseline logic process does not require extra masks or process steps. Conventional wisdom has suggested that the tunnel oxide of Flash will reach its scaling limits at 6–7nm due to high reliability requirement for high-density applications. Will FG logic NVM be scalable with tunneling oxide down to 50Å of 2.5V I/O devices at technology nodes of 65nm and beyond? In this work, we demonstrate that FG logic NVM with 50Å is readily achievable by performing theoretical statistics analysis and utilizing advanced reliability engineering. Reliability data on FG logic NVM with 50Å tunneling oxide in a standard 65nm CMOS technology process is also provided.