Ferroelectric-type nonvolatile semiconductor memory
AssigneeSony Corporation
InventorToshiyuki Nishihara
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A ferroelectric-type nonvolatile semiconductor memory comprising a plurality of bit lines and a plurality of memory cells, a plurality of the memory cells belonging to one of two or more thermal history groups having different thermal histories with regard to their production processes, and a reference potential of the same level is provided to the bit lines connected to the memory cells belonging to the same thermal history group, and reference potentials of different levels are provided to the bit lines connected to the memory cells belonging to the different thermal history groups.
Claims5
A ferroelectric-type nonvolatile semiconductor memory comprising a plurality of bit lines and a plurality of memory cells,
- each memory cell comprising a first electrode, a first side of a ferroelectric layer connected to said first electrode and a second side of the ferroelectric layer connected to a second electrode,
- each of said memory cells belonging to one of two or more thermal history groups having different thermal histories with regard to their production processes,
- each member of a pair of said memory cells being selectively connected to a corresponding one of first and second bit lines,
- and wherein each member of the pair of memory cells belongs to a different thermal history group,
- said pair of bit lines being connected to a differential sense amplifier,
- wherein, when data stored in a first one of said memory cells forming the pair is read out, a first reference potential is provided to the second bit line which is isolated from the second one of the memory cells of the pair,
- when data stored in the second one of said memory cells forming the pair is read out, a second reference potential is provided to the first bit line, and
- the first reference potential is provided to the second bit line when reading data from all other memory cells belonging to the same thermal history group as the first one of said memory cells and the second reference potential is applied to the first bit line when reading data from all other memory cells belonging to the same thermal history group as the second memory cell.
A ferroelectric non-volatile memory comprising:
- a first bit line and a second bit line respectively connected to first and second inputs of a differential amplifier;
- a plurality of first memory cells belonging to a first thermal history group which are selectively connected to the first bit line and a second plurality of memory cells belonging to a second thermal history group selectively connected to the second bit line;
- wherein when reading data from the memory cells of the first thermal history group, the second bit line is isolated from the second memory cells and a first reference level is applied to the second bit line and further wherein when reading memory cells of the second group, the first bit line is isolated from the first group of memory cells and a second reference potential is applied to the first bit line.
A method of reading data from a non-volatile memory comprising:
- providing first and second groups of memory cells wherein the first group of memory cells has a first thermal history and wherein the second group of memory cells has a second thermal history different from the first group;
- reading memory cells of the first group with a differential amplifier having a first reference input and reading the cells of the second group with a second reference level.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.