Temperature effects on metal-alumina-nitride-oxide-silicon memory operations

We present a detailed investigation of temperature effects on the operation of TaN/Al(2)O(3)/Si(3)N(4)/SiO(2)/Si (TANOS) memory devices. We show that not only retention but also program and erase operations are affected significantly by temperature. Using a large set of experimental data and simulations on a variety of TANOS stacks, we show that the temperature dependence of TANOS program and erase operations can be explained by accounting for that the alumina dielectric constant increases by 20%-25% over a 125 K temperature range. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3446835]