A Novel Ni-Al Alloy Metal Induced Lateral Crystallization Process for Improved Channel Conduction in 3-D NAND Flash

In this letter, a Ni-Al alloy based metal induced lateral crystallization (MILC) process in a vertical Si channel, from 3-D NAND flash cell, is reported. Alloying Ni with Al improves NiSi2 nucleation, resulting in a favorable channel morphology after the silicide transport. We show that it is possible to achieve better ON-current and gate control over the existing Ni-only MILC process with no observable impact on the memory performance.