A scalable, low voltage, low cost SONOS memory technology for embedded NVM applications

A novel low cost, eNVM technology is presented which has the lowest program/erase voltage reported to date. It is based on the integration of a SONOS based NVM module into a foundry CMOS process with only 3 additional masks and no additional HV oxide. An optimized integration scheme ensures that the CMOS device parameters of the eNVM process are closely matched to baseline process. Even with the low 7.5V program/erase voltage, excellent reliability has been demonstrated meeting automotive data retention requirements and 100k cycle endurance on a 4.5Mbit flash memory macro.