PHYSICS, MODELING AND RELIABILITY OF INNOVATIVE NON-VOLATILE MEMORIES

Enclosed in this thesis work it can be found the results of a three years long re-search activity performed during the XXIV-th cycle of the Ph.D. school in Engi-neering Science of the Universita ́ degli Studi di Ferrara. The topic of this work is concerned about the electrical characterization, physics, modeling and reliability of innovative non-volatile memories, addressing most of the proposed alternative to the floating-gate based memories which currently are facing a technology dead end. Throughout the chapters of this thesis it will be provided a detailed char-acterization of the envisioned replacements for the common NOR and NAND Flash technologies into the near future embedded and MPSoCs (Multi Process-ing System on Chip) systems. In Chapter 1 it will be introduced the non-volatile memory technology with direct reference on nowadays Flash mainstream, provid-ing indications and comments on why the system designers should be forced to change the approach to new memory concepts. In Chapter 2 it will be presented one of the most studied post-floating gate memory technology for MPSoCs: th