Leakage Current Characteristics of the Multiple Metal Alloy Nanodot Memory

The leakage current characteristics of a multiple metal alloy nanodot device for a nonvolatile random access memory using FePt materials are investigated. Several annealing conditions are evaluated and optimized to suppress the leakage current and to better the memory characterisctics. This work confirmed that the annealing condition of 700 degrees C in a high vacuum ambience (under 1 x 10(-5) Pa) simultaneously provided good cell characteristics from a high dot density of over 1 x 10(13)/cm(2) and a low leakage current. In addition, a smaller nanodot diameter was found to give a lower leakage current for the multiple nanodot memory. Finally, for the proposed annealing condition, the quadruple FePt multiple nanodot memory with a 2-nm dot diameter provided good leakage current characteristics, showing a threshold voltage shift of under 5% at an initial retention stage of 1000 sec.