Sandisk Technologies Inc.

Vishwanath Basavaegowda Shanthakumar

Jiahui Yuan

Deepanshu Dutta

Abhijith Prakash

Anubhav Khandelwal

Ravi J Kumar

Abu Naser Zainuddin

Parth Amin

Xiaochen Zhu

A duration of a program pulse used to program non-volatile memory cells such as NAND may be increased responsive to a programming failure using a shorter duration program pulse. The duration of at least one program pulse may be increased for at least one group of memory cells in response to a failure to program a group using a default program pulse duration. The group that experiences the increased duration program pulse may be the same group for which the program operation failed using the shorter program pulse or may be a different group than the group for which the program operation failed using the shorter program pulse.

Program pulse duration increase for NAND program failure

A memory apparatus and method of operation are provided. The apparatus includes memory cells each connected to a word line and arranged in one of a plurality of blocks and configured to retain a threshold voltage corresponding to a data state. The memory cells are operable in one of a first read condition in which a word line voltage is discharged and a second read condition in which the word line voltage is coupled up to a residual voltage level. A control circuit determines a power on event and periodically apply a predetermined refresh read voltage to the word line for a predetermined period of time for each of the plurality of blocks at a specified interval based on at least one data retention factor to maintain the memory cells of the plurality of blocks in the second read condition in response to determining the power on event.

Read refresh to improve power on data retention for a non-volatile memory

Apparatuses and techniques are described for periodically refreshing word line voltages in a memory device. A decision to perform a refresh operation is made based on the temperature and number of program-erase (P-E) cycles. In one approach, the refresh operation is not performed if the number of P-E cycles is below a threshold number and/or the temperature is below a threshold temperature. When the temperature and number of P-E cycles indicate that a refresh operation should be performed, a timer counts an elapsed time until the elapsed time reaches an allowed discharge time. The allowed discharge time can be based on the temperature, number of P-E cycles, and other factors which affect an expected number of fail bits. The allowed discharge time can also change as the temperature changes during the counting of the elapsed time.

Temperature and cycling dependent refresh operation for memory cells

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Milpitas, CA, United States of America

Vishwanath Basavaegowda Shanthakumar