• Transactions on Electrical and Electronic Materials
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.155-165
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• 2010

As a promising candidate to replace the conventional floating gate flash memories, polysilicon-oxide-nitride-oxidesilicon (SONOS)-type nonvolatile semiconductor memories have been investigated widely in the past several years. SONOS-type memories have some advantages over the conventional floating gate flash memories, such as lower operating voltage, excellent endurance and compatibility with standard complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology. However, their operating speed and date retention characteristics are still the bottlenecks to limit the applications of SONOS-type memories. Recently, various approaches have been used to make a trade-off between the operating speed and the date retention characteristics. Application of high-k dielectrics to SONOS-type memories is a predominant route. This article provides the state-of-the-art research progress of high-k dielectrics applicable to SONOS-type nonvolatile semiconductor memories. It begins with a short description of working mechanism of SONOS-type memories, and then deals with the materials' requirements of high-k dielectrics used for SONOS-type memories. In the following section, the microstructures of high-k dielectrics used as tunneling layers, charge trapping layers and blocking layers in SONOS-type memories, and their impacts on the memory behaviors are critically reviewed. The improvement of the memory characteristics by using multilayered structures, including multilayered tunneling layer or multilayered charge trapping layer are also discussed. Finally, this review is concluded with our perspectives towards the future researches on the high-k dielectrics applicable to SONOS-type nonvolatile semiconductor memories.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2016.02a
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• pp.282.1-282.1
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• 2016

The remarkable physical properties of two-dimensional (2D) semiconducting materials such as molybdenum disulfide ($MoS_2$) and tungsten disulfide ($WS_2$) etc. have attracted considerable attentions for future high-performance electronic and optoelectronic devices. The ongoing studies of $MoS_2$ based nonvolatile memories have been demonstrated by worldwide researchers. The opening hysteresis in transfer characteristics have been revealed by different charge confining layer, for instance, few-layer graphene, $MoS_2$, metallic nanocrystal, hafnium oxide, and guanine. However, limited works built their nonvolatile memories using entirely of assembled 2D crystals. This is important in aspect view of large-scale manufacture and vertical integration for future memory device engineering. We report $WS_2$ based nonvolatile memories utilizing functional van der Waals heterostructure in which multi-layered graphene is encapsulated between $SiO_2$ and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN). We experimentally observed that, large memory window (20 V) allows to reveal high on-/off-state ratio (>$10^3$). Moreover, the devices manifest perfect retention of 13% charge loss after 10 years due to large graphene/hBN barrier height. Interestingly, the performance of our memories is drastically better than ever published work related to $MoS_2$ and black phosphorus flash memory technology.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2013.02a
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• pp.79-79
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• 2013

Quantum-structures with nanoparticles have been attractive for various electronic and photonic devices [1,2]. In recent, nonvolatile memories such as nano-floating gate memory (NFGM) and resistance random access memory (ReRAM) have been studied using silicides, metals, and metal oxides nanoparticles [3,4]. In this study, we fabricated nonvolatile memories with silicides (WSi2, Ti2Si, V2Si) and metal-oxide (Cu2O, Fe2O3, ZnO, SnO2, In2O3 and etc.) nanoparticles embedded in polyimide matrix, and photovoltaic device also with SiC nanoparticles. The capacitance-voltageand current-voltage data showed a threshold voltage shift as a function of write/erase voltage, which implies the carrier charging and discharging into the metal-oxide nanoparticles. We have investigated also the electrical properties of ReRAM consisted with the nanoparticles embedded in ZnO, SiO2, polyimide layer on the monolayered graphene. We will discuss what the current bistability of the nanoparticle ReRAM with monolayered graphene, which occurred as a result of fully functional operation of the nonvolatile memory device. A photovoltaic device structure with nanoparticles was fabricated and its optical properties were also studied by photoluminescence and UV-Vis absorption measurements. We will discuss a feasibility of nanoparticles to application of nonvolatile memories and photovoltaic devices.

• IEMEK Journal of Embedded Systems and Applications
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• v.10 no.6
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• pp.391-397
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• 2015

Nonvolatile memories in memory hierarchy have been investigated to reduce its energy consumption because nonvolatile memories consume zero leakage power in memory cells. One of the difficulties is, however, that the endurance of most nonvolatile memory technologies is much shorter than the conventional SRAM and DRAM technology. This has limited its usage to only the low levels of a memory hierarchy, e.g., disks, that is far from the CPU. In this paper, we study the use of a new type of nonvolatile memories - the Phase Change Memory (PCM) with a DRAM buffer system as the main memory. Our design reduced the total energy of a DRAM main memory of the same capacity by 80%. These results indicate that it is feasible to use PCM technology in place of DRAM in the main memory for better energy efficiency.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.9-9
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• 2011

There has been strong demand for novel nonvolatile memory technology for low-cost, large-area, and low-power flexible electronics applications. Resistive memories based on metal oxide thin films have been extensively studied for application as next-generation nonvolatile memory devices. However, although the metal oxide-based resistive memories have several advantages, such as good scalability, low-power consumption, and fast switching speed, their application to large-area flexible substrates has been limited due to their material characteristics and necessity of a high-temperature fabrication process. As a promising nonvolatile memory technology for large-area flexible applications, we present a graphene oxide-based memory that can be easily fabricated using a room temperature spin-casting method on flexible substrates and has reliable memory performance in terms of retention and endurance. The microscopic origin of the bipolar resistive switching behaviour was elucidated and is attributed to rupture and formation of conducting filaments at the top amorphous interface layer formed between the graphene oxide film and the top Al metal electrode, via high-resolution transmission electron microscopy and in situ x-ray photoemission spectroscopy. This work provides an important step for developing understanding of the fundamental physics of bipolar resistive switching in graphene oxide films, for the application to future flexible electronics.

• Electrical & Electronic Materials
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.123-129
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• 1994

SONOS EEPROM chips, containing several SONOSFET nonvolatile memories of various channel size, have been fabricated on the basis of the existing n-well CMOS processing technology for 1 Mbit DRAM ($1.2\mu\textrm{m}$.m design rule). All the SONOSFET memories have the triple insulated-gate consisting of 30.angs. tunneling oxide, 205.angs. nitride and 65.angs. blocking oxide. The miniaturization of the devices for the higher density EEPROM and their characteristics alterations accompanied with the scaling-down have been investigated. The stabler operating characteristics were attained by increasing the ratio of the channel width to length. Also, the transfer, switching, retention and degradation characteristics of the most favorable performance devices were presented and discussed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.112-115
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• 2003

There is a growing need for a nonvolatile memory technology with faster speed than existing nonvolatile memories. $T_c$(crystallization temperature) is confirmed by measuring the conductivity with the varying temperature. The sample is heated on the hotplate and slow down to the room-temperature. We prepared Te based alloy bulk. The materials can be used for nonvolatile random access memory.

• Proceedings of the Korean Magnestics Society Conference
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• 2002.12a
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• pp.188-189
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• 2002

One of the current goals in memory device developments is to realize a nonvolatile memory, i.e., the stored information maintains even when the power is turned off. The representative candidates for nonvolatile memories are magnetic random access memory (MRAM) and ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM). In order to achieve a high density memory in MRAM device, the external magnetic field should be localized in a tiny cell to control the direction of spontaneous magnetization. (omitted)

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2003.07a
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• pp.416-419
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• 2003

There is a growing need for a nonvolatile memory technology with faster speed than existing nonvolatile memories. We studied of phase-change according to temperature and voltage in chalcogenide thin film base on $Ge_2Sb_2Te_5$. Searching for Tg(Glass transition temperature) temperature controlled on hotplate with RT quenching. We measure I-V characteristic through out bottom electrode(ITO) and top electrode(Al) between $Ge_2Sb_2Te_5$. And compared with I-V characteristics after impress the variable stress.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.6-11
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• 2018

As embedded memory technology evolves, the traditional Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) technology has reached the end of development. For deepening the manufacturing process technology, the next generation memory technology is highly required because of the exponentially increasing leakage current of SRAM. Non-volatile memories such as STT-MRAM (Spin Torque Transfer Magnetic Random Access Memory), PCM (Phase Change Memory) are good candidates for replacing SRAM technology in embedded memory systems. They have many advanced characteristics in the perspective of power consumption, leakage power, size (density) and latency. Nonetheless, nonvolatile memories have two major problems that hinder their use it the next-generation memory. First, the lifetime of the nonvolatile memory cell is limited by the number of write operations. Next, the write operation consumes more latency and power than the same size of the read operation.These disadvantages can be solved using the compiler. The disadvantage of non-volatile memory is in write operations. Therefore, when the compiler decides the layout of the data, it is solved by optimizing the write operation to allocate a lot of data to the SRAM. This study provides insights into how these compiler and architectural designs can be developed.