Al₂O₃ nanocrystals embedded in amorphous Lu₂O₃ high-k gate dielectric for floating gate memory application

The integration of nanoparticles has high potential in technological applications and opens up possibilities of the development of new devices. Compared to the conventional floating gate memory, a structure containing nanocrystals embedded in dielectrics shows high potential to produce a memory with high endurance, low operating voltage, fast write-erase speeds and better immunity to soft errors [S. Tiwari, F. Rana, H. Hanafi et al. 1996 Appl.Phys. Lett. 68, 1377]. A significant improvement on data retention [J. J. Lee, X. Wang et al. 2003 Proceedings of the VLSI Technol. Symposium, p33] can be observed when discrete nanodots are used instead of continuous floating gate as charge storage nodes because local defect related leakage can be reduced efficiently. Furthermore, using a high-k dielectric in place of the conventional SiO2 based dielectric, nanodots flash memory is able to achieve significantly improved programming efficiency and data retention [A. Thean and J. -P. Leburton, 2002 IEEE Potentials 21, 35; D. W. Kim, T. Kim and S. K. Banerjee, 2003 IEEE Trans. Electron Devices 50, 1823]. We have recently successfully developed a method to produce nanodots embedded in high-k gate dielectrics [C. L. Yuan, P. Darmawan, Y. Setiawan and P. S. Lee, 2006 Electrochemical and Solid-State Letters 9, F53; C. L. Yuan, P. Darmawan, Y. Setiawan and P. S. Lee, 2006 Europhys. Lett. 74, 177]. In this paper, we fabricated the memory structure of Al₂O₃ nanocrystals embedded in amorphous Lu₂O₃ high k dielectric using pulsed laser ablation. The mean size and density of the Al₂O₃ nanocrystals are estimated to be about 5 nm and 7x1011 cm⁻², respectively. Good electrical performances in terms of large memory window and good data retention were observed. Our preparation method is simple, fast and economical.