Method and apparatus for preventing overtunneling in...

Static information storage and retrieval – Floating gate – Particular biasing

Reexamination Certificate

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C365S185180, C365S185140, C365S185280

Reexamination Certificate

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06853583

ABSTRACT:
Methods and apparatuses prevent overtunneling inpFET-based nonvolatile floating gate memory (NVM) cells. During a tunneling process, in which charge carriers are removed from a floating gate of apFET-based NVM cell, a channel current of a memory cell transistor is monitored and compared to a predetermined minimum channel current required to maintain a conducting channel in an injection transistor of the memory cell. When the monitored channel current drops below the predetermined minimum channel current, charge carriers are injected onto the floating gate by impact-ionized hot-electron injection (IHEI) so that overtunneling is avoided.

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