3D NAND memory reliability improvement by tailoring program/erase stress

Abstract We have studied the effects of single-pulse program and erase (P/E) stress on 3D NAND memory and its influence on fail modes for memory reliability. TCAD simulation is used to extract the electrostatic potentials and electric fields in the memory cells. We find that the acceleration of memory fail mode is a sequential event with the applied P/E pulse stress, and the fail modes can be precisely tailored based on its severity for early diagnosis and to improve memory reliability. We also find that the erase pulse stress is dominant in accelerating the fail modes compared to the program pulse stress by a factor of 3.43. A systematic approach is proposed to achieve extremely low defect-parts per million to improve memory product reliability for ultra-high-capacity storage and hyperscale compute applications.