Growth ambient on memory characteristics in Au nanoclusters embedded in high-k dielectric as novel non-volatile memory

In this work, we report on the findings of the effects of different ambient on memory characteristics of a floating gate memory structure containing HfAlO control gate, self-organized Au nanoclusters (NCs), and a HfAlO tunnel layer deposited by the pulsed-laser deposition. The optimized fabrication environment has been found and stored charge density up to 1013cm-2has been achieved. As the sizes of the Au NCs are smaller than 4 nm, they may be potentially used in multilayer-structured multi-bit memory cell.