British Telecommunications Public Limited Company

The British Petroleum Company, P.l.c.

British Telecommunications Corporation

Hughes Microelectronics Limited

Alan E Owen

Peter G Lecomber

Janos Hajto

Anthony J Snell

Mervyn J Rose

Walter E Spear

Gerard Sarrabayrouse

Jaoquim J Delima

Komanduri V Krishna

Peter G Le Comber, Deceased

James L West

Ian S Osborne

Resistive memory element

Amorphous silicon memory

Insulating layers responsible for the trapping of electric charge in non-volatile semiconductor memories, such as FAMOS or MNOS, are fabricated as thicker layers when doped with metals having partially filled d or f electron shells. Typically the insulating layer is silicon oxide doped with up to 10 atomic % of a first transition series metal.

EEPROM with metal doped insulator

A semiconductor device comprising superimposed layers of p- and n-doped semiconducting material (e.g. silicon) and electrical contact means for applying an electrical potential across the superimposed layers is characterized in that the p- and n-doped layers are both of amorphous semiconducting mateial (e.g. silicon) and one of said layers is much more heavily doped than the other. Suitably the less heavily doped layer has a thickness which is not greater than 2 .mu.m and the dopant concentration in the more heavily doped layer is one hundred or more times the dopant concentration of the less heavily doped layer. Preferably a third or quasi-intrinsic layer or substantially undoped amorphous semiconducting material (e.g. silicon) or electrically insulating material is applied to one of the doped layers between that layer and its electrical contact means. The device can be used as an electrically-programmable non-volatile semiconductor memory device.

Non-volatile amorphous semiconductor memory device utilizing a forming

Growing community of inventors

Edinburgh, United Kingdom

Alan E Owen