A Novel Fluorine Incorporated Band Engineered (Be) Tunnel (Sio2/Hfsio/Sio2) Tanos With Excellent Program/Erase & Endurance To 10(5) Cycles

We demonstrate for the first time a fluorine incorporated band-engineered (BE) tunnel oxide (SiO2/HfSiO/SiO2) TANOS with excellent program / erase (P/E) characteristics and endurance to 10(5) cycles. Incorporating fluorine in the tunnel dielectric improves Si/SiO2 interface resulting in excellent endurance of nearly constant over 3V P/E window for at least 105 cycles. Fluorine also reduces interface state generation during retention by similar to 20%. Furthermore, Fluorine passivates bulk traps leading to as much as similar to 10x higher charge to breakdown (Q(bd)) and similar to 10-50x lower interface state density (Dit). Fluorine passivation for BE-TANOS is significant because it improves reliability assisting implementation of TANOS flash NVM beyond the 20nm node.