Effect of Pre-annealing to Blocking Oxide on the Performance of Dual Trapping-layer Engineered Charge Trapping Memory

The effect of pre-annealing to blocking oxide on the performance of trapping layer engineered charge trapping flash memory was investigated in this work. Compared to the devices fabricated by conventional process, the devices with pre-annealing treatment exhibit larger memory window, faster program speed, and significantly improved data retention. The enhancement of memory performance and reliability can be possible from the improvement of blocking oxide quality and the change of band-gap and band offsets in memory gate stack. The findings provide a useful guide for CTM process optimization.