Investigation on Data Retrieval in Emerging Non-Volatile Memory Devices Using Conductive Probe Atomic Force Microscopy

Emerging non-volatile memories (NVM) are alternatives to the conventional charge storage-based memories such as Flash, static random-access memory (SRAM) and dynamic random-access memory (DRAM). They are typically resistance based and able to store data depending on its high or low resistance state. The possibility of reading back this stored data may help in the digital forensics field, but also poses a security concern. In this paper, front-side sample preparation will be discussed for data retrieval with conductive probe atomic force microscopy (CP-AFM) method. The application has been demonstrated on a 4 Mbit Resistive RAM (RRAM).