Aluminum single-electron nonvolatile floating gate memory cell

We have developed an aluminum single-electron transistor device which was modified to incorporate an additional floating node in between the gate and the electrometer. At high gate voltages, Fowler-Nordheim type emission occurred between the gate and the floating node where the charges were stored. The emission events were evidenced by the oscillatory electrometer current which allowed estimation of the number of storage electrons. We demonstrated experimentally the nonvolatile memory function of this device and the results were justified by numeric simulations. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.