Polycrystalline Si Nanowire SONOS Nonvolatile Memory Cell Fabricated on a Gate-All-Around (GAA) Channel Architecture

In this letter, we present SONOS nonvolatile memory device with gate-all-around polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) nanowire channel. The SONOS memory cell with 23-nm nanowire width, fabricated using top-down CMOS process, exhibits fast programming and erasing speed as well as improved subthreshold behavior of the transistor. Both the memory and transistor characteristics are dependent on the nanowire width-smaller the width, better the performance. The good device characteristics along with simple fabrication method make the poly-Si nanowire SONOS memory a promising candidate for future system-on-panel and system-on-chip applications.