ULTRARAM: A Low‐Energy, High‐Endurance, Compound‐Semiconductor Memory on Silicon

ULTRARAM is a nonvolatile memory with the potential to achieve fast, ultralow-energy electron storage in a floating gate accessed through a triple-barrier resonant tunneling heterostructure. Here its implementation is reported on a Si substrate; a vital step toward cost-effective mass production. Sample growth using molecular beam epitaxy commences with deposition of an AlSb nucleation layer to seed the growth of a GaSb buffer layer, followed by the III-V memory epilayers. Fabricated single-cell memories show clear 0/1 logic-state contrast after <= 10 ms duration program/erase pulses of approximate to 2.5 V, a remarkably fast switching speed for 10 and 20 mu m devices. Furthermore, the combination of low voltage and small device capacitance per unit area results in a switching energy that is orders of magnitude lower than dynamic random access memory and flash, for a given cell size. Extended testing of devices reveals retention in excess of 1000 years and degradation-free endurance of over 10(7) program/erase cycles, surpassing very recent results for similar devices on GaAs substrates.