Temperature Effects on Metal-Alumina-Nitride-Oxide-Silicon Memory Operations

We present a detailed investigation of temperature effects on the operation of TaN/Al2O3 / Si3N4 /SiO2 / Si (TANOS) memory devices. We show that not only retention but also program and erase operations are affected significantly by temperature. Using a large set of experimental data and simulations on a variety of TANOS stacks, we show that the temperature dependence of TANOS program and erase operations can be explained by accounting for that the alumina dielectric constant increases by 20%–25% over a 125 K temperature range.