Multilayer Graphene Nanoribbon and Carbon Nanotube based Floating Gate Transistor for Nonvolatile Flash Memory

Abstract

Floating gate transistor is the basic building block of non-volatile flash memory, which is one of the most widely used memory gadgets in modern micro and nano electronic applications. Recently there has been a surge of interest to introduce a new generation of memory devices using graphene nanotechnology. In this paper we present a new floating gate transistor (FGT) design based on multilayer graphene nanoribbon (MLGNR) and carbon nanotube (CNT). In the proposed FGT a multilayer structure of graphene nanoribbon (GNR) would be used as the channel of the field effect transistor (FET) and a layer of CNTs would be used as the floating gate. We have performed an analysis of the charge accumulation mechanism in the floating gate and its dependence on the applied terminal voltages. Based on our analysis we have observed that proposed graphene based floating gate transistor could be operated at a reduced voltage compared to conventional silicon based floating gate devices. We have presented detail analysis of the operation and the programming and erasing processes of the proposed FGT, dependency of the programming and erasing current density on different parameters, impact of scaling the thicknesses of the control and tunneling oxides. These analysis are done based on the capacitance model of the device.