SONOS MEMORY DEVICE AND METHOD OF OPERATING A SONOS MEMORY DEVICE

摘要

The present invention relates to a memory device, hereinafter SONOS memory device, comprising SONOS memory cells having a control gate terminal connected to a SONOS layer stack with a nitride layer, a source terminal and a drain terminal; and a programming unit, which is connected to the drain terminal and to the control gate terminal and which is configured to apply a predetermined positive drain voltage to the drain terminal of the selected SONOS memory cell and a predetermined negative gate voltage to the control gate terminal of the selected SONOS memory cell each upon receiving a programming request addressed to a selected SONOS memory cell, the drain voltage and the gate voltage being suitable for creating hot holes at a drain side of the selected SONOS memory cell in a gate-assisted band-to-band-tunneling process and for injecting the hot holes into the nitride layer of the selected SONOS memory cell, thus switching the selected SONOS memory cell from a high-V_Tstate to a low-V_T state.