Novel Ferroelectric NAND Flash Memory Demonstrates 10000 Times More Program and Erase cycles than Conventional Memory Cells

The University of Tokyo (Univ. Tokyo) has demonstrated that the use of ferroelectric gate field-effect transistors (FeFETs) as memory cells dramatically improves the performance of NAND flash memory. The FeFET, the newly developed memory cell, can be programmed and erased as many times as 100 million or more and with programming voltage of less than 6 V, whereas the conventional NAND flash memory cells have ten thousand program/erase endurance cycles with approximately 20 V programming voltage. It has been assumed that conventional NAND flash memory can be downsized to 30 nm at the minimum, whereas this novel memory cell will meet the needs of the next 20-nm and 10-nm technology generations. And thus, this memory cell is expected to be used in a next-generation, high-density, high-capacity nonvolatile memory.