The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Dec. 01, 1998
Filed:
Jul. 02, 1996
Applicant:
Inventor:
Max C Kuo, San Leandro, CA (US);
Assignee:
National Semiconductor Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Assistant Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
H01L / ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
257315 ; 438264 ;
Abstract
The capacitance across the layer of tunnel oxide in an electrically-erasable programmable read-only-memory (EEPROM) cell is reduced by forming the layer of tunnel oxide to have a first region which is substantially thicker than a second region. The thicker region of tunnel oxide results from doping the buried region exposed by the tunnel window so that the buried region has different levels of dopant concentration. When the tunnel oxide is then grown over the buried region, the oxide formed over the more heavily doped portion grows at a faster rate than does the portion with the lower dopant concentration.