Study of Warm Electron Injection in Double Gate SONOS by Full Band Monte Carlo Simulation

TL;DR

This study uses full-band Monte Carlo simulations to analyze warm electron injection in double gate SONOS memory, revealing how low drain voltages can effectively induce programming via electron tunneling.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed simulation approach to study warm electron injection in double gate SONOS, highlighting the impact of bias conditions on programming efficiency.

Findings

Gate current increases significantly with drain bias.

Warm electron injection is viable for programming at low drain voltages.

Simulation provides insights into electron energy distribution at the interface.

Abstract

In this paper we investigate warm electron injection in a double gate SONOS memory by means of 2D full-band Monte Carlo simulations of the Boltzmann Transport Equation (BTE). Electrons are accelerated in the channel by a drain-to-source voltage VDS smaller than 3 V, so that programming occurs via electrons tunneling through a potential barrier whose height has been effectively reduced by the accumulated kinetic energy. Particle energy distribution at the semiconductor/oxide interface is studied for different bias conditions and different positions along the channel. The gate current is calculated with a continuum-based post-processing method as a function of the particle distribution obtained from Monte Carlo. Simulation results show that the gate current increases by several orders of magnitude with increasing drain bias and warm electron injection can be an interesting option for programming when short channel effects prohibit the application of larger drain bias.