Investigation and Compact Modeling of Hot-Carrier Injection for Read Disturbance in 3-D NAND Flash Memory

A new compact model framework is presented to predict the read disturbance induced by hot-carrier injection (HCI) in 3-D NAND flash memory. The physical phenomena that occur during read operation such as band-to-band tunneling (BTBT), impact ionization (II), and HCI, are analyzed through computer-aided design (TCAD) simulation, and the correlations between each other are considered in the compact model. In particular, it is found that a negative feedback process occurs to HCI during read operation due to the geometrical characteristics of 3-D NAND flash. Owing to this phenomenon, time dynamic behavior of HCI is observed during the read operation. The proposed compact model framework includes all of these 3-D NAND flash features. It would help to predict HCI-induced read disturbance without many read measurements.