A proposal of new floating-dot memory storing a small number of electrons with relatively long retention time at low voltage operations

We analytically investigate the trade-off between write errors caused by thermal fluctuation and the required number of electrons for floating-dot memory. Our evaluation shows that more than 7 electrons are necessary to maintain writing reliability in memory cells on the scale of ten-nanometers at room temperature. In this paper, we propose a new floating-dot memory that uses direct tunneling for low voltage write- and erase-operations, and exhibits relatively long retention time.