Characterization of polycrystalline silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon devices on a SiO2 or Si3N4 buffer layer

Abstract

Silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS) memory devices were fabricated from polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) using the solid phase crystallization (SPC) method for use in a low-power system-on-panel (SOP) display. In these poly-Si SONOS memories, oxide or nitride was used as a buffer layer. The electrical characteristics, such as the threshold voltage (VT), subthreshold slope (SS) and transconductance (gm), were determined for each SONOS device. To interpret the characteristics of both poly-Si devices, x-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements and flicker noise analysis were conducted. The results show that the poly-Si SONOS on the oxide layer has better electrical, memory characteristics, such as turn-on speed and gm, program/erase, endurance and data retention than that on the nitride layer. From the XRD measurements, it is shown that the grain size of the poly-Si on the oxide layer is larger than that on the nitride layer. From the flicker noise analysis, the poly-Si device on oxide was shown to have less traps or defects in the channel layer than that on nitride.