Nanoislands-Based Charge Trapping Memory: A Scalability Study

Zinc-oxide (ZnO) and zirconia (ZrO
₂
) metal oxides have been studied extensively in the past few decades with several potential applications including memory devices. In this work, a scalability study, based on the ITRS roadmap, is conducted on memory devices with ZnO and ZrO
₂
nanoislands charge trapping layer. Both nanoislands are deposited using atomic layer deposition; however, the different sizes, distribution, and properties of the materials result in different memory performance. The results show that at the 32-nm node charge trapping memory with 127 ZrO
₂
nanoislands can provide a 9.4 V memory window. However, with ZnO only, 31 nanoislands can provide a window of 2.5 V. The results indicate that ZrO
₂
nanoislands are more promising than ZnO in scaled down devices due to their higher density, higher-k, and the absence of quantum confinement effects.