Charge storage characteristics of atomic layer deposited ZrO₂/Al₂O₃ multilayered films

¹ College of Physics and Electrical Engineering, Anyang Normal University, Anyang 45500, P.R. China
² School of Mathematics and Statistics, Anyang Normal University, Anyang 45500, P.R. China
³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, P.R. China

^a e-mail: tangzhenjie2002@163.com

Received: 1 September 2012
Revised: 9 October 2012
Accepted: 14 November 2012
Published online: 12 December 2012

Abstract

The multilayered films-based charge trap flash memory cells were fabricated by incorporating high-k ZrO₂/Al₂O₃ nanolaminates as charge trapping layer and amorphous Al₂O₃ as tunneling and blocking layers. The thickness of high-k ZrO₂ or Al₂O₃ film in charge trapping layer after annealing treatment was about 1.5 nm for each layer. The charge storage characteristics of such memory cells were measured, and the results demonstrated that they had a large hysteresis memory window of 3.85 V at a sweeping gate voltage of ±8 V, an excellent endurance up to 10⁵ write/erase cycles and a small charge loss of 9.6% after 10 years.