Electrical characteristics of SiC thin film charge trap memory with barrier engineered tunnel layer

Recently, nonvolatile memories (NVM) of various types have been researched to improve the electrical performance such as program/erase voltages, speed and retention times. Also, the charge trap memory is a strong candidate to realize the ultra dense 20-nm scale NVM. Furthermore, the high charge efficiency and the thermal stability of SiC nanocrystals NVM with single $SiO_2$ tunnel barrier have been reported. [1-2] In this study, the SiC charge trap NVM was fabricated and electrical properties were characterized. The 100-nm thick Poly-Si layer was deposited to confined source/drain region by using low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LP-CVD). After etching and lithography process for fabricate the gate region, the $Si_3N_4/SiO_2/Si_3N_4$ (NON) and $SiO_2/Si_3N_4/SiO_2$ (ONO) barrier engineered tunnel layer were deposited by using LP-CVD. The equivalent oxide thickness of NON and ONO tunnel layer are 5.2 nm and 5.6 nm, respectively. By using ultra-high vacuum magnetron sputtering with base pressure 3x10-10 Torr, the 2-nm SiC and 20-nm $SiO_2$ were successively deposited on ONO and NON tunnel layers. Finally, after deposited 200-nm thick Al layer, the source, drain and gate areas were defined by using reactive-ion etching and photolithography. The lengths of squire gate are $2\;{\mu}m$, $5\;{\mu}m$ and $10\;{\mu}m$. The electrical properties of devices were measured by using a HP 4156A precision semiconductor parameter analyzer, E4980A LCR capacitor meter and an Agilent 81104A pulse pattern generator system. The electrical characteristics such as the memory effect, program/erase speeds, operation voltages, and retention time of SiC charge trap memory device with barrier engineered tunnel layer will be discussed.