US Patent 7964908 - Memory cell with oxygen vacancy nanoregions

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/7964908.html

A variety of designs for future charge trap flash memory have been proposed using semiconductor nanocrystals as the charge trap material. This patent from Samsung teaches an alternate approach which may be simpler to manufacture by using nanostructured regions of metal oxides having oxygen vacancies. Claim 1 reads:

1. A memory cell comprising:

a substrate; and

a charge storage gate at an upper portion of the substrate, the charge storage gate including a gate electrode and a plurality of dielectric layers interposed between the gate electrode and the substrate,

wherein at least one of the dielectric layers comprises a dielectric material and nano regions embedded in the dielectric material,

wherein an atomic composition of the dielectric material includes oxygen, an atomic composition of the nano regions includes oxygen, and an oxygen concentration of the dielectric material is greater than an oxygen concentration of the nano regions.