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:
Sep. 08, 2009
Filed:
Aug. 24, 2006
Jiankang Bu, Windham, ME (US);
William S. Belcher, Cape Elizabeth, ME (US);
David Courtney Parker, Topsham, ME (US);
Jiankang Bu, Windham, ME (US);
William S. Belcher, Cape Elizabeth, ME (US);
David Courtney Parker, Topsham, ME (US);
National Semiconductor Corporation, Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
A system and method are disclosed for providing drain avalanche hot carrier (DAHC) programming for non-volatile memory (NVM) applications. A memory cell of the present invention comprises a program transistor and a control capacitor, each having a gate coupled together to form a floating gate. The size of the program transistor is selected to create a coupling ratio between the program transistor and the control capacitor that is large enough to facilitate a Fowler-Nordheim erase process and small enough to facilitate DACH programming. A source bias voltage is supplied to the source of the program transistor to increase the hot electron injection rate and to decrease the hot electron generation rate in the memory cell.