Abstract
Non-volatile semiconductor memories have attracted much attention due to the fast growing demand of portable electronic devices. In this thesis, the erase mechanism and the performance of the state of the art SONOS-type flash memories are critically examined, and a low temperature extended-pulse laser annealing for COI FeRAM is also studied.In the study of innovative SONOS-type flash memories, a de-trapping model for the erase mechanism of MANOS device is proposed and demonstrated. In addition, the erase and retention characteristics for MONOS, MANOS and BE-SONOS devices are fairly compared by using the transient analysis method. Moreover, an innovative BE-MANOS is proposed to overcome the erase saturation and to enlarge the memory window. However, the retention of BE-MANOS is not as good as BE-SONOS owing to the charge leakage through Al2O3 film. By inserting a SiO2 buffer layer between Al2O3 and SiN storage layer, the oxide-buffered BE-MANOS shows good performance and good reliability, and the roles of high-k Al2O3 and SiO2 buffer layer are also clarified in this work.An extended-pulse laser annealing is used to provide sufficient thermal energy and time into the PZT film to complete the crystallization, while the bulk of materials remains at low temperature. In this work, the thermal simulation is also presented to illustrate the temperature distribution in the specimen and the benefits of the extended pulse. This new low temperature process is suitable for embedded COI FeRAM for SoC applications.