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.

Date of Patent:
Aug. 15, 2000

Filed:

Aug. 24, 1998
Applicant:
Inventors:

Hiroaki Nakanishi, Kobe, JP;

Kunio Matsudaira, Kobe, JP;

Masahiro Matsuo, Kobe, JP;

Hirohisa Abe, Sanda, JP;

Yoichi Sakai, Ibaraki, JP;

Assignee:

Ricoh Company, Ltd., Tokyo, JP;

Attorney:
Primary Examiner:
Int. Cl.
CPC ...
H01L / ;
U.S. Cl.
CPC ...
257314 ; 257315 ; 257316 ; 257319 ; 257320 ;
Abstract

An electrically alterable non-volatile memory device is disclosed. In the device architecture of the memory device, control gates are formed, divided corresponding to the blocks and interconnected independently within each block, to further be connected to a metal gate line through block select MOS transistors which are formed on a semiconductor substrate between the blocks. All gate electrodes of the block select MOS transistors which are connected to the control gates interconnected as above within each block are further connected each other. These block select transistors can be controlled by applying erase block signals such as, EBS0, EBS1 and so on, to respective transistors. In addition, the control gates are further connected to a decoder such that some of these control gates may be selected through metal control gate lines. With the block select transistors together with the metal control gate line provided as above, erasing can be achieved in the unit of memory cells which are connected to a metal control gate line within a block.


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