Ryo Fukuda

Autonomous refresh of floating body cell (FBC)

Physics of autonomous refresh of FBC is presented. Current input to the floating body by impact ionization and output by charge pumping can balance to make FBC refresh by itself without sense amplifier operation. Thanks to this feature, multiple cells on a BL can be refreshed simultaneously, leading to a drastic reduction of BL charging current compared to the conventional refresh. 600 muA refresh current for 1 G-bit memory is achieved in 32 nm technology node with 4 ms retention time. If gate direct tunneling current is used as output, FBC can realize static RAM without periodical refresh when retaining data.

Floating Body RAM Technology and its Scalability to 32nm Node and Beyond

Technologies and improved performance of the floating body RAM are demonstrated. Reducing SOI thickness to 43nm, a 16Mb chip yield of 68% has been obtained. Device simulation proves that the floating body cell is scalable to the 32nm node keeping signal margin (threshold voltage difference) and data retention time constant

A 1.6 GB/s DDR2 128 Mb Chain FeRAM With Scalable Octal Bitline and Sensing Schemes

An 87.7 mm2 1.6 GB/s 128 Mb chain FeRAM with 130 nm 4-metal CMOS process is demonstrated. In addition to small bitline capacitance inherent to chain FeRAM architecture, three new FeRAM scaling techniques - octal bitline architecture, small parasitic capacitance sensing scheme, and dual metal plateline scheme - reduce bitline capacitance from 100 fF to 60 fF. As a result, a cell signal of ±220 mV is achieved even with the small cell size of 0.252 ¿m2. An 800 Mb/s/pin read/write bandwidth at 400 MHz clock is realized by installing SDRAM compatible DDR2 interface, and performance is verified by simulation. The internal power-line bounce noise due to 400 MHz clock operation is suppressed to less than 50 mV by an event-driven current driver, which supplies several hundreds of mA of current within 2 ns response. The precise timing and voltage controls are achieved by using the data stored in a compact FeRAM-fuse, which consists of extra FeRAM memory cells placed in edge of normal array instead of conventional laser fuse links. This configuration minimizes area penalty to 0.2% without cell signal degradation.

Scaling scenario of floating body cell (FBC) suppressing V th variation due to random dopant fluctuation

A scaling scenario of fully-depleted floating body cell (FBC) is demonstrated in view of signal margin for stable array functionality. Measurement and numerical simulation reveal that the Vth variation of cell array transistors is mainly attributed to the random dopant fluctuation in channel region. By setting the channel impurity concentration in the order of 1016cm-3 or lower, Gbit array functionality is guaranteed for the 32nm node and further scaled generations.

FBC's Potential of 6F 2 Single Cell Operation in Multi-Gbit Memories Confirmed by a Newly Developed Method for Measuring Signal Sense Margin

A 6F2 single cell (one-cell-per-bit) operation of the floating body RAM (FBRAM) is successfully demonstrated for the first time with more than 60% yield of 16Mbit area in a wafer. The signal sense margin (SSM) at actual read conditions is found to well back up the functional results. The parasitic resistance in the source and drain formed under the FBCs spacers can be optimized for making the SSM as large as 8muA at plusmn 4.5sigma without sacrificing the retention time.

Array architecture of floating body cell (FBC) with quasi-shielded open bit line scheme for sub-40nm node

Cell array architecture for floating body RAM of 35 nm bit line half pitch is described. The quasi-non-destructive-read-out feature of floating body cell contributes to eliminating inter-bit line coupling noise in open bit line architecture without degrading the cycle time of the RAM.

Autonomous Refresh of Floating-Body Cell due to Current Anomaly of Impact Ionization

Physics of autonomous refresh is presented, which explains the mechanism of a spontaneous recovery of degraded binary states of the floating-body cell (FBC). Input current to the floating body and output current from the body balance to generate an unstable stationary state that is accompanied by two stable stationary ones. The current anomaly of impact ionization is essential for the instability that brings about the bistability and is realized by positive feedback where impact ionization current input increases as the body voltage increases. Experiments with charge pumping current as output show that the autonomous refresh is possible on a single-cell basis. Necessary conditions for a high-density memory to be autonomously refreshed are derived and assessed for state-of-the-art FBCs. FBC is shown in simulation to become an SRAM cell when the autonomous refresh is applied, which uses gate direct tunneling current as output. This is an SRAM cell that is theoretically expected to have the simplest structure ever reported.