Nonvolatile memory characteristics of NMOSFET with Ag nanocrystals synthesized via a thermal decomposition process for uniform device distribution

This paper presents nonvolatile memory characteristics using Ag nanocrystals (NCs) formed by a thermal decomposition and size-selective precipitation technique for Flash memory application. In the NC formation process, the size of NCs and the space NC-to-NC were precisely controlled by a size-selective precipitation technique and the length of the self-assembled monolayer surrounding the NCs, respectively. The size and density of the Ag NCs synthesized were typically 3 - 5 nm and 2.7 x 10(12) cm(-2), respectively. Due to the regularly distributed Ag NCs with high density, uniform memory characteristics and high program efficiency were achieved from NMOSFETs embedded with the Ag NCs, which were fabricated by the gate-last process.