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:
Feb. 08, 2005
Filed:
Sep. 16, 2002
Christopher J. Diorio, Shoreline, WA (US);
Chad Lindhorst, Seattle, WA (US);
Shail Srinivas, Seattle, WA (US);
Alberto Pesavento, Seattle, WA (US);
Troy Gilliland, Newcastle, WA (US);
Christopher J. Diorio, Shoreline, WA (US);
Chad Lindhorst, Seattle, WA (US);
Shail Srinivas, Seattle, WA (US);
Alberto Pesavento, Seattle, WA (US);
Troy Gilliland, Newcastle, WA (US);
Impinj, Inc., Seattle, WA (US);
Abstract
Methods and apparatuses prevent overtunneling inFET-based nonvolatile floating gate memory (NVM) cells. During a tunneling process, in which charge carriers are removed from a floating gate of aFET-based NVM cell, a channel current of a memory cell transistor is monitored and compared to a predetermined minimum channel current required to maintain a conducting channel in an injection transistor of the memory cell. When the monitored channel current drops below the predetermined minimum channel current, charge carriers are injected onto the floating gate by impact-ionized hot-electron injection (IHEI) so that overtunneling is avoided.