The Demonstration of Gate Dielectric-fuse 4kb OTP Memory Feasible for Embedded Applications in High-k Metal-gate CMOS Generations and Beyond

A 4kb macro of One Time Programming (OTP) memory, implemented by a new breakdown, named dielectric fuse (dFuse) breakdown, has been realized on a foundry pure logic 28nm HKMG CMOS platform. The feature size of a unit cell is 1.5T per cell with $7.5\mathrm{F}^{2}$. The experimental results show that dFuse macro exhibits high programming (PGM) speed of 100ns at 4V, read time smaller than 10ns at 0.75V, and excellent data retention under one-month baking at 150°C. More importantly, the program voltage is weakly dependent on the environmental temperature, suitable for automotive applications. This OTP is also expected to be scalable to advanced node such as FinFET and provides an ideal and reliable solution for the storage purpose in IoT and 5G era.