Setting up of a Floating‐Gate test bench in a low noise environment to measure very low tunneling currents

We propose and develop a complete solution to evaluate very low leakage currents in Non‐Volatile Memories, based on the Floating‐Gate Technique. We intend to use very basic tools (power supply, multimeter,...) but with a very good current resolution. The aim of this work is to show the feasibility of such measurements and the ability to reach current levels lower than the ones obtained by any direct measurement, even from high‐performance devices. The key node is that the experiment is led in a very particular low‐noise environment (underground laboratory) allowing to keep the electrical contacts on the device under test as long as possible. We have demonstrated the feasibility of this approach and obtained a very promising 10 ‐17 A current level in less than two weeks.