The present disclosure relates generally to the fabrication of non-volatile memory. In at least one embodiment, the present disclosure relates to forming a layered blocking dielectric which has a portion thereof removed in the wordline direction.
The subject matter of the present disclosure is particularly pointed out and distinctly claimed in the concluding portion of the specification. The foregoing and other features of the present disclosure will become more fully apparent from the following description and appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings. It is understood that the accompanying drawings depict only several embodiments in accordance with the present disclosure and are, therefore, not to be considered limiting of its scope. The disclosure will be described with additional specificity and detail through use of the accompanying drawings, such that the advantages of the present disclosure can be more readily ascertained, and in which:
a-3g are side cross-sectional views of an embodiment of fabricating a memory cell in the wordline direction;
a and 4b are side cross-sectional views of an embodiment of fabricating a memory cell in the wordline direction;
a-5f are side cross-sectional views of an embodiment of fabricating a memory cell in the wordline direction;
a-6d are side cross-sectional views of an embodiment of fabricating a memory cell in the wordline direction;
In the following detailed description, reference is made to the accompanying drawings that show, by way of illustration, specific embodiments in which the claimed subject matter may be practiced. These embodiments are described in sufficient detail to enable those skilled in the art to practice the subject matter. It is to be understood that the various embodiments, although different, are not necessarily mutually exclusive. For example, a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described herein, in connection with one embodiment, may be implemented within other embodiments without departing from the spirit and scope of the claimed subject matter. In addition, it is to be understood that the location or arrangement of individual elements within each disclosed embodiment may be modified without departing from the spirit and scope of the claimed subject matter. The following detailed description is, therefore, not to be taken in a limiting sense, and the scope of the subject matter is defined only by the appended claims, appropriately interpreted, along with the full range of equivalents to which the appended claims are entitled. In the drawings, like numerals refer to the same or similar elements or functionality throughout the several views, and that elements depicted therein are not necessarily to scale with one another, rather individual elements may be enlarged or reduced in order to more easily comprehend the elements in the context of the present description.
Embodiments of the present description relate to the field of flash memory fabrication. In at least one embodiment of the present disclosure, memory cells are fabricated which include forming a multilayer blocking dielectric that has at least a portion thereof removed in the wordline direction.
Memory devices are integrated circuits that provide data storage of electronics devices, including volatile memory which loses stored information when not powered (e.g., RAM—Random Access Memory) and non-volatile memory which retain stored information even when not powered (e.g., flash memory). Non-volatile flash memory is generally used in portable devices, such as cellular telephones, personal digital assistants (“PDA”), portable digital media players, digital cameras, solid state computer hard drives, and the like.
Flash memory generally includes a plurality of memory cells, which are floating-gate transistors. The memory cells are typically stacked gated structures comprising a flowing gate, which is electrically isolated from an underlying semiconductor substrate by a thin dielectric layer (referred to as a “tunnel dielectric”), and a control gate positioned which above the floating gate and electrically isolated therefrom by an inter-poly dielectric layer. The inter-poly dielectric may be a layered structure comprising a silicon nitride layer between two layers of silicon oxide (referred to in the industry as an “ONO” or “Oxide-Nitride-Oxide” layer).
The floating gate is generally a conductive material that serves as a charge storage element for storing an electrical charge. This charge storage defines the memory state of that transistor, wherein the presence or lack of a stored charge represents a binary “1” or “0” state in one data bit. The floating gate, typically composed of polycrystalline silicon (i.e., referred to in the industry as “polysilicon”). The floating gate is “floating” in the sense that the bottom of the floating gate is insulated by the tunnel dielectric, and the top of the floating gate is insulated by the inter-poly dielectric layer.
In many instances, the interfacing area between the floating gate and the tunnel dielectric is smaller than the interfacing area between the floating gate and the top gate (“control gate”). The asymmetry is often created by the control gate that “wraps around” the upper portions of the floating gate over the control dielectric. This asymmetric area ratio may give rise to an advantage in a key capacitive coupling parameter called the “gate coupling ratio” compared to not have the asymmetry. The increased gate coupling ratio may give rise to many device advantages including lower program voltage, lower gate leakage, and the like.
The flash memory industry has continuously strived to reduce the size of their memory product, which has generally resulted in faster and less expensive memory products. However, as flash memory has scaled below about 40 nm node (measured as the bitline-to-bitline half-pitch), several major challenges may arise due to bitlines and wordlines getting too close to one another. Due to shrinking physical dimensions, it may become impractical to maintain the advantageous asymmetry in area ratios traditionally achieved through “wrapping” of the control gate. The effective elimination of the “wrap” effect, which renders all cells “planar” at the sub-40 nm node, may result in a rapid degradation of the gate coupling ratio. The reduction of the gate coupling ratio, in turn, may lead to detrimental parasitic coupling between neighboring cells, as well as program/erase voltage saturation, as will be understood to those skilled in the art.
One method to mitigate the reduction in capacitive-coupling ratio is through the reduction of the inter-poly dielectric layer effective oxide thickness by replacing the inter-poly dielectric layer with a high K (high dielectric constant) dielectric material, referred to as a high K blocking dielectric. The use of a high K blocking dielectric may allow the cell to, at least partially, gain back the reduced capacitive-coupling ratio, while maintaining a relatively high physical thickness to prevent excessive leakage during read, program, or erase operations. However, the combination of a “planar” cell with a high K blocking dielectric as the inter-poly dielectric layer is only a partial solution due to some key tradeoffs including lateral charge loss arising from charge transfer through the high K blocking dielectric (or related interfaces if the layered high K blocking dielectric used), and parasitic cell-to-cell capacitive coupling which may lead to interference effects during a read operation.
Each flash memory cell string 1041, 1042, . . . , and 104X includes a string selection transistor gate 112, a ground selection transistor gate 114, and a number of flash memory cells 120 connected in series between the string selection transistor gate 112 and the ground selection transistor gate 114. The string selection transistor gate 112, the ground selection transistor gate 114, and flash memory cells 120 of each string are coupled to a string selection line SSL, wordlines WL1, WL2, . . . , WL15, and WL16, and a ground selection line GSL, respectively. The string selection line SSL, wordlines WL1, WL2, . . . , WL15, and WL16, and a ground selection line GSL carry outputs from a row decoder (not shown). The wordline direction of the memory cell array 102 is defined by arrow 130 and the bitline direction of the memory cell array 102 is defined by arrow 140.
In various embodiments, the multilayer blocking dielectric layer 216 may be comprised of two to five chemically distinct dielectric materials. It will be understood to those skilled in the art that the order of the layers will depend on the requirements of effective oxide thickness or other critical device parameters. It is, of course, understood that the stoichiometry of the compounds does not have to be exact, as some dielectric layers may be tuned out of stoichiometry for optimum performance.
In the fabrication of a NAND flash memory device, the charge storage layer 214 material must be removed between each adjacent memory cell 120 in each flash memory cell string 1041, 1042, . . . , and 104X (i.e., in the bitline direction 140), if the charge storage layer 214 is composed of a conductive material. Even where the charge storage layer 214 is composed of discontinuous conductors or a continuous dielectric material, virtually all device architectures have the charge storage layer 214 and the multilayer blocking dielectric layer 216 removed between each adjacent memory cell 120 in each flash memory cell string 1041, 1042, . . . , and 104X.
In the opposite direction between adjacent flash memory cell strings 1041, 1042, . . . , and 104X (i.e., in the wordline direction 130), the charge storage layer 214 can remain without being removed, if the material used in forming the charge storage layer 214 is not a continuous conductor (i.e., a discontinuous conductor or a continuous dielectric material).
Embodiments of the fabrication of the memory cells 120 in the wordline direction 130 (see
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In one embodiment of the present disclosure, the tunnel dielectric layer 212 may comprise single layer of dielectric material, including, but not limited to, silicon oxide (SiO2) or silicon oxynitride (SiON). In another embodiment, the tunnel dielectric layer 212 may comprise multiple layer structure. In a bi-layer embodiment, the tunnel dielectric layer 212 may comprise a layer of silicon dioxide and a layer of silicon oxynitride or may comprise a layer of silicon dioxide and a layer of silicon nitride (Si3N4). In a tri-layer embodiment, the tunnel dielectric layer 212 may comprise a layer of silicon nitride between two layers of silicon dioxide and/or may comprise a layer of silicon oxynitride between two layers of silicon dioxide. In an embodiment of the present disclosure, the tunnel dielectric layer 212 may have a thickness of between about 4 and 9 nm. The formation of the tunnel dielectric layer 212 may comprise depositing the dielectric material(s), including, but limited to chemical vapor deposition, physical vapor deposition, and/or atomic layer deposition, or growing the dielectric on the substrate 208, as will be understood to those skilled in the art.
In one embodiment of the present disclosure, the charge storage layer 214 may comprise continuous conductors of electrically conductive or semi-conductive materials, including but not limited to silicon, metals, metal alloys, and conductive metal nitrides and oxides (such as tantalum nitride (TaN) or ruthenium dioxide (RuO2)). In another embodiment, the charge storage layer 214 may comprise discontinuous conductors of electrically conductive or semi-conductive materials, including but not limited to the materials discussed for the continuous conductors. In yet another embodiment, the charge storage layer 214 may comprise a continuous dielectric materials (charge trapping), including but not limited to silicon nitride, silicon oxynitride, and the like. In an embodiment, the charge storage layer 214 may have a thickness of between about 1 and 10 nm. In specific embodiment, shown in
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The trenches 304 of the various embodiments of the present description may be formed by any suitable method including laser ablation, ion ablation, lithography, and/or etch processes to selectively remove material.
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The various embodiments described herein wherein, where memory cells are formed with a portion of the blocking dielectric removed in the wordline direction, may give rise to advantages in change retention and may reduce parasitic coupling interference between adjacent cells in the wordline direction.
Although the method of fabricating a memory cell 120 are described succinctly herein, it is understood that the steps for fabrication may further include other microelectronic fabrication processes such as lithography, etch, thin films deposition, planarization (such as chemical mechanical polishing (CMP)), diffusion, metrology, the use of sacrificial layers, the use of etch stop layers, the use of planarization stop layers, and/or any other associated action with microelectronic component fabrication.
The detailed description has described various embodiments of the devices and/or processes through the use of illustrations, block diagrams, flowcharts, and/or examples. Insofar as such illustrations, block diagrams, flowcharts, and/or examples contain one or more functions and/or operations, it will be understood by those skilled in the art that each function and/or operation within each illustration, block diagram, flowchart, and/or example can be implemented, individually and/or collectively, by a wide range of hardware, software, firmware, or virtually any combination thereof.
The described subject matter sometimes illustrates different components contained within, or connected with, different other components. It is understood that such illustrations are merely exemplary, and that many alternate structures can be implemented to achieve the same functionality. In a conceptual sense, any arrangement of components to achieve the same functionality is effectively “associated” such that the desired functionality is achieved. Thus, any two components herein combined to achieve a particular functionality can be seen as “associated with” each other such that the desired functionality is achieved, irrespective of structures or intermediate components. Likewise, any two components so associated can also be viewed as being “operably connected”, or “operably coupled”, to each other to achieve the desired functionality, and any two components capable of being so associated can also be viewed as being “operably couplable”, to each other to achieve the desired functionality. Specific examples of operably couplable include but are not limited to physically mateable and/or physically interacting components and/or wirelessly interactable and/or wirelessly interacting components and/or logically interacting and/or logically interactable components.
It will be understood by those skilled in the art that terms used herein, and especially in the appended claims are generally intended as “open” terms. In general, the terms “including” or “includes” should be interpreted as “including but not limited to” or “includes but is not limited to”, respectively. Additionally, the term “having” should be interpreted as “having at least”.
The use of plural and/or singular terms within the detailed description can be translated from the plural to the singular and/or from the singular to the plural as is appropriate to the context and/or the application.
It will be further understood by those skilled in the art that if an indication of the number of elements is used in a claim, the intent for the claim to be so limited will be explicitly recited in the claim, and in the absence of such recitation no such intent is present. Additionally, if a specific number of an introduced claim recitation is explicitly recited, those skilled in the art will recognize that such recitation should typically be interpreted to mean “at least” the recited number.
The use of the terms “an embodiment,” “one embodiment,” “some embodiments,” “another embodiment,” or “other embodiments” in the specification may mean that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with one or more embodiments may be included in at least some embodiments, but not necessarily in all embodiments. The various uses of the terms “an embodiment,” “one embodiment,” “another embodiment,” or “other embodiments” in the detailed description are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiments.
While certain exemplary techniques have been described and shown herein using various methods and systems, it should be understood by those skilled in the art that various other modifications may be made, and equivalents may be substituted, without departing from claimed subject matter or spirit thereof. Additionally, many modifications may be made to adapt a particular situation to the teachings of claimed subject matter without departing from the central concept described herein. Therefore, it is intended that claimed subject matter not be limited to the particular examples disclosed, but that such claimed subject matter also may include all implementations falling within the scope of the appended claims, and equivalents thereof.