Charge Storage and Optical Response of Hybrid Nanodots Floating Gate For Functional Memories

Abstract

AbstractWe have proposed and fabricated a hybrid nanodots floating gate (FG), in which Si quantum dots (QDs) as charge injection/emission nodes and NiSi nanodots as charge storage nodes are stacked with an ultrathin SiO2 interlayer, to satisfy both large memory window and multivalued capability. In this study, Si-QDs with an areal density of ˜3×1011cm-2 were formed on ultrathin SiO2 layer by controlling SiH4 chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and NiSi nanodots were prepared by full-silicidation of Si-QDs promoted with remote H2-plasma exposure after Ni evaporation. From capacitance-voltage(C-V) characteristics of MOS capacitors with a NiSi nanodots/Si-QDs hybrid FG, stable storage of many charges in the deep potential well of each NiSi nanodot was confirmed. Also, by applying pulsed gate biases, stepwise charge injection to and emission from NiSi nanodots through discrete energy states in Si-QDs were demonstrated. In addition, by 1310nm (˜0.95eV) light irradiation, a distinct optical response in C-V characteristics was detected, which can be interpreted in terms of the shift of charge centroid in the hybrid FG stack due to transfer of photoexcited electrons from NiSi-nanodots to the Si-QDs.