ABSTRACT
Nonvolatile memories that are based on silicon nanocrystal floating gate have shown great promise for future applications in ultradense and ultralow power flash memory. Metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) field-effect-transistor devices with an embedded layer of nanocrystals in the dielectric as a floating gate have demonstrated several attractive features. The subtle influences on the electronic structure due to the bandstructure anisotropy and the unique nanocrystal geometry can only be captured by a full 3D quantum-mechanical solution. The multi-grid framework complements the GS solver to quickly eliminate high frequency errors on coarser level grids through aliasing effects. The discrete offsets in energy in the sawtooth-like spectrum correspond to the addition of a single electron on a specific energy level. The range of gate voltages between two successive offsets corresponds to the electrostatic energy required to overcome the Coulomb repulsion caused by the electrons already in the QD.
