A Nonvolatile Ternary-Content-Addressable- Memory Comprising Resistive-Gate Field-Effect Transistors

We demonstrate a nonvolatile ternary-content-addressable-memory (nv-TCAM) composed of 2 resistive-gate field-effect transistors (RG-FETs) in series, tied at source terminals. In this nv-TCAM, an RG-FET is as a controller; the other is a data reservoir. The former offers “Care” or “Don’t-care” operation; the latter is used to decide if the searched data are matched. To realize these functionalities, the 2-bit per-cell storage is designed in each RG-FET. Results show that searching-power for “matching-data” is about 100 nW and smaller than
$2~\mu \text{W}$
for the case of “data-mismatched”. The searching procedure can be executed in 6.8 ns by pulses. Endurance cycles achieve
$10^{{6}}$
times for each storage level with
$5.47\times 10 ^{{5}}$
of the memory window; the stored information has been retained at temperatures >109.7 °C, predicted by the accelerating test of time-to-failure.