One-transistor composite-gate memory
AssigneeMicron Technology, Inc.
InventorsCem Basceri, Gurtej S. Sandhu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
One-transistor memory devices facilitate nonvolatile data storage through the manipulation of oxygen vacancies within a trapping layer of a field-effect transistor (FET), thereby providing control and variation of threshold voltages of the transistor. Various threshold voltages may be assigned a data value, providing the ability to store one or more bits of data in a single memory cell. To control the threshold voltage, the oxygen vacancies may be manipulated by trapping electrons within the vacancies, freeing trapped electrons from the vacancies, moving the vacancies within the trapping layer and annihilating the vacancies.
Claims23
An adjustable threshold voltage field effect transistor, comprising:
- a first and a second source/drain region formed in a semiconductor substrate;
- a dielectric layer overlying the semiconductor substrate and at least a portion of each of the first and the second source/drain regions;
- a charge trap storage region comprising oxygen vacancies and formed over the dielectric layer where the oxygen vacancies present in the charge trap storage region can be manipulated;
- and
- a control gate formed over the charge trap storage region.
A memory device, comprising:
- one or more memory cells, each memory cell comprising oxygen vacancies present in a charge trap layer of each memory cell;
- and
- control circuitry, wherein the control circuitry is configured to manipulate oxygen vacancies in the one or more memory cells to alter a threshold voltage of a memory cell.
A memory device comprising a memory cell, wherein the memory cell comprises:
- a channel region;
- a gate dielectric adjacent the channel region;
- a trap adjacent the gate dielectric;
- and
- a control gate adjacent the trap,
- wherein the memory device is configured to manipulate oxygen vacancies within the trap to facilitate data storage.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.