Silicon Oxide Films Containing Amorphous or Crystalline Silicon Nanodots for Device Applications

Тhe impressive recent growth of the portable systems market (mobile PC, MP3 audio player, digital camera, mobile phones, hybrid hard disks, etc.), has increased the interest of the semiconductor industry on non-volatile memory (NVM) technologies. Тhe demand for mobility applications is the main reason for the fast development of NVM technologies and products. Therefore lower power consumption, lower system costs, ever higher capacity and system performance are required. The conventional floating-gate memories satisfy these needs at present but the scaling of these memories is becoming increasingly difficult primarily because reliability problems limiting the bottom (tunnel) oxide to a thickness of around 10 nm.