IMPROVING DATA RETENTION OF LAST WORD LINE OF NON-VOLATILE MEMORY ARRAYS

摘要

Techniques are disclosed herein for operating non-volatile storage. The techniques compensate for differences in floating gate coupling effect experienced by non- volatile storage elements on different word lines. An erase of a group of non-volatile storage elements is performed. (1102) A set of the non-volatile storage elements are for storing data and at least one of the non-volatile storage elements is a dummy that is not for storing data. The dummy is a neighbor to one of the data non-volatile storage elements. The data non volatile storage elements are programmed at some point after the erase (1104). Then, a programming voltage is applied to the dummy non-volatile storage element to increase the threshold voltage of the dummy to cause floating gate coupling effect to the neighbor non-volatile storage element to compensate for lesser floating gate coupling effect that the neighbor experienced during programming (1106).