News Article
Infineon unveils smallest non-volatile flash cell
Scientists at German chip maker Infineon Technologies have built the world’s smallest non-volatile flash memory cell. The pioneering cell measures 20nm - around 5,000 times thinner than a human hair.
Scientists at German chip maker Infineon Technologies have built the world’s smallest non-volatile flash memory cell.
The pioneering cell measures 20nm - around 5,000 times thinner than a human hair – and yet it has the potential to make memory devices that can store 32Gb of data. That is eight times the capacity of memory devices currently available on the market.
The company says that the cell does not require any radical new materials or manufacturing techniques and could therefore go into mass production within a few years.
Non-volatile flash memories are becoming increasingly popular as mass storage media for devices such as digital cameras, camcorders and USB sticks.
The most advanced non-volatile flash memory devices can permanently store one or two bits of information per memory cell without a supply voltage. Such memories have a feature size of around 90nm.
Scaling down the cells further has proved problematic because of nanoscale physical effects. In particular, fabricating 20nm-sized flash memory cells has been considered virtually impossible because these physical effects would make the memory cells extremely unreliable.
However, Infineon’s researchers have eliminated the nanoscale effects by creating a unique three-dimensional structure with a fin for the transistor that acts as the heart of the memory cell.
This special geometry minimises unwanted effects and significantly improves electrostatic control compared to today’s flat transistors.
Called a FinFET (fin field effect transistor), the Infineon device stores the electrons that carry the information in a nitride layer that lies electrically isolated between the silicon fin and the gate electrode. Just 8nm thick, the fin is controlled by the 20nm-wide gate electrode.
The FinFET is durable and has excellent electrical characteristics, claims the company.
"The most advanced memories on the market today need approximately 1,000 electrons in order to reliably remember one bit," said an Infineon spokesman. "But the new Infineon memory cell uses just 100 electrons."
Details about the new flash memory were presented at a post-deadline paper at the IEEE’s International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco.
The pioneering cell measures 20nm - around 5,000 times thinner than a human hair – and yet it has the potential to make memory devices that can store 32Gb of data. That is eight times the capacity of memory devices currently available on the market.
The company says that the cell does not require any radical new materials or manufacturing techniques and could therefore go into mass production within a few years.
Non-volatile flash memories are becoming increasingly popular as mass storage media for devices such as digital cameras, camcorders and USB sticks.
The most advanced non-volatile flash memory devices can permanently store one or two bits of information per memory cell without a supply voltage. Such memories have a feature size of around 90nm.
Scaling down the cells further has proved problematic because of nanoscale physical effects. In particular, fabricating 20nm-sized flash memory cells has been considered virtually impossible because these physical effects would make the memory cells extremely unreliable.
However, Infineon’s researchers have eliminated the nanoscale effects by creating a unique three-dimensional structure with a fin for the transistor that acts as the heart of the memory cell.
This special geometry minimises unwanted effects and significantly improves electrostatic control compared to today’s flat transistors.
Called a FinFET (fin field effect transistor), the Infineon device stores the electrons that carry the information in a nitride layer that lies electrically isolated between the silicon fin and the gate electrode. Just 8nm thick, the fin is controlled by the 20nm-wide gate electrode.
The FinFET is durable and has excellent electrical characteristics, claims the company.
"The most advanced memories on the market today need approximately 1,000 electrons in order to reliably remember one bit," said an Infineon spokesman. "But the new Infineon memory cell uses just 100 electrons."
Details about the new flash memory were presented at a post-deadline paper at the IEEE’s International Electron Devices Meeting in San Francisco.
