Hot Electron Source Side Injection Comprehension in 40nm eSTM

In this paper, we detail an experimental study of the hot electron Source Side Injection programming operation of the embedded Select in Trench Memory (eSTM™) cell. A complete set of electrical characterizations is carried out. A focus on the Select Gate bias to improve the programming window and the consumption is reported. Moreover, the impact of the Sense-to-Select distance, on the memory behavior is highlighted. These characteristics give us the keys to find the best tradeoff to program this cell. Finally, the optimized programming scheme is used to show the endurance up to 500k cycles, while the programming current is monitored. We report an energy consumption decrease during the cycling thanks to the Source Side Injection mechanism. This makes the eSTM™ cell suitable for low-power and scalable embedded applications.