Mesoscopic phenomena in Au nanocrystal floating gate memory structure

Abstract

A resonant tunneling process is demonstrated in the HfAlO/Au nanocrystals/HfAlO trilayer nonvolatile memory (NVM) structure on Si, where the electrons tunnel back and forth to the Au nanocrystals due to the various mesoscopic behaviors. The electron tunneling behavior in this trilayer structure exhibits dissimilar resemblance to those in double-barrier tunnel junctions taking into account of the correlation of Coulomb blockade effect. The observed specific tunneling process is beneficial in studying the interplays of various mesoscopic physics and application of single electron devices into NVM. © 2009 American Institute of Physics.