Floating-gate transistor

Floating-gate transistor

The floating gate transistor is a kind of transistor that is commonly used for non-volatile storage such as flash, EPROM and EEPROM memory. Floating-gate transistors are almost always floating-gate MOSFETs.Floating-gate MOSFETs are useful because of their ability to store an electrical charge for extended periods of time even without a connection to a power supply. Floating-gate MOSFETs are composed of a normal MOSFET and one or more capacitors used to couple control voltages to the floating gate. Oxide surrounds the floating gate entirely, so charge trapped on the floating gate remains there. The charge stored on the floating gate can be modified by applying voltages to the source, drain, body and control gate terminals (since we have Vfg=Ccg/CT*Vcg+Cs/CT*Vs+Cd/CT*Vd+Cb/CT*Vb) such that the fields result in phenomena like Fowler-Nordheim tunneling and hot carrier injection.

Some applications of the FGMOS are digital storage element in EPROM, EEPROM and FLASH memories, neuronal computational element in neural networks, analog storage element, e-Pots and single-transistor DACs.

History

The first report of a Floating Gate mosfet was made by Kahng and Sze, [D. Kahng and S.M. Sze, "A floating-gate and its application to memory devices," The Bell System Technical Journal, vol. 46, no. 4, 1967, pp. 1288-1295] and dates back to 1967. The first application of the FGMOS was to store digital data in EEPROM, EPROM and FLASH memories. However, the current interest incircuits started from developing large-scale computations in neuromorphic systems, which are inherently analog.

In 1989 Intel employed the FGMOS as an analog nonvolatile memory element in its ETANN chip, [M. Holler, S. Tam, H. Castro, and R. Benson, "An electrically trainable artificial neural network with 10240 'floating gate' synapses," Proceeding of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks, Washington, D.C., vol. II, 1989, pp. 191-196] demonstrating the potential of using FGMOS devices for applications other than digital memory.

Three research accomplishments laid the groundwork for much of the current FGMOS circuit development:
# Thomsen and Brooke's demonstration and use of electron tunneling in a standard CMOS double-poly process [A. Thomsen and M.A. Brooke, "A floating gate MOSFET with tunneling injector fabricated using a standard double-polysilicon CMOS process," IEEE Electron Device Letters, vol. 12, 1991, pp. 111-113] allowed many researchers to investigate FGMOS circuits concepts without requiring access to specialized fabrication processes.
# The "ν"MOS, or neuron-MOS, circuit approach by Shibata and Ohmi [T. Shibata and T. Ohmi, "A functional MOS transistor featuring gate-level weighted sum and threshold operations," IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices, vol. 39, no. 6, 1992, pp. 1444-1455] provided the initial inspiration and framework to use capacitors for linear computations. These researchers concentrated on the FG circuit properties instead of the device properties, and used either UV light to equalize charge, or simulated FG elements by opening and closing MOSFET switches.
# Carver Mead's adaptive retina [C.A. Mead and M. Ismail, editors, Analog VLSI Implementation of Neural Systems, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, 1989] gave the first example of using continuously-operating FG programming/erasing techniques, in this case UV light, as the backbone of an adaptive circuit technology.

Structure

An FGMOS can be fabricated by electrically isolating the gate of a standard MOS transistor, so that there are no resistive connections to its gate. A number of secondary gates or inputs are then deposited above the floating gate (FG) and are electrically isolated from it. These inputs are only capacitively connected to the FG, since the FG is completely surrounded by highly resistive material. So, in terms of its DC operating point, the FG is a floating node.

See also

* MOSFET

References

External links

* [http://kabuki.eecs.berkeley.edu/~gchien/papers/ee231/ A Floating Gate Programmable MOSFET Using Standard Double-Poly CMOS Process]
* [http://computer.howstuffworks.com/rom4.htm Howstuffworks "How ROM Works"]
* [http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/diorio/Publications/CoAuthConfPapers/PaulHasler/Floatgate_dev.pdf Floating Gate Devices]


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Поможем написать реферат

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Floating-Gate-Transistor — Ein Floating Gate Transistor ist ein spezieller Transistor, der in nichtflüchtigen Speichern zur permanenten Informationspeicherung eingesetzt wird. Er wurde 1967 von Dawon Kahng und S.M. Sze in den Bell Laboratories entwickelt [1] und stellt in… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Floating Gate — Ein Floating Gate Transistor ist ein spezieller Transistor, welcher in nichtflüchtigen Speichern zur permanenten Informationspeicherung eingesetzt wird. Er wurde 1967 von D. Kahng und S.M. Sze in den Bell Laboratories entwickelt [1] und stellt in …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • Floating Gate MOSFET — The Floating Gate MOSFET (FGMOS) is a field effect transistor, whose structure is similar to a conventional MOSFET. The gate of the FGMOS is electrically isolated, creating a floating node in DC, and a number of secondary gates or inputs are… …   Wikipedia

  • Floating-Gate-MOS-Transistor — MOP tranzistorius su plūdriąja užtūra statusas T sritis radioelektronika atitikmenys: angl. floating gate MOS transistor vok. Floating Gate MOS Transistor, m rus. МОП транзистор с плавающим затвором, m pranc. transistor MOS à grille flottante, m …   Radioelektronikos terminų žodynas

  • floating-gate MOS transistor — MOP tranzistorius su plūdriąja užtūra statusas T sritis radioelektronika atitikmenys: angl. floating gate MOS transistor vok. Floating Gate MOS Transistor, m rus. МОП транзистор с плавающим затвором, m pranc. transistor MOS à grille flottante, m …   Radioelektronikos terminų žodynas

  • floating-gate field-effect transistor — lauko tranzistorius su plūdriąja užtūra statusas T sritis radioelektronika atitikmenys: angl. floating gate field effect transistor vok. Floating Gate Feldeffekttransistor, m rus. полевой транзистор с плавающим затвором, m pranc. transistor à… …   Radioelektronikos terminų žodynas

  • Floating-Gate-Feldeffekttransistor — lauko tranzistorius su plūdriąja užtūra statusas T sritis radioelektronika atitikmenys: angl. floating gate field effect transistor vok. Floating Gate Feldeffekttransistor, m rus. полевой транзистор с плавающим затвором, m pranc. transistor à… …   Radioelektronikos terminų žodynas

  • Transistor — For other uses, see Transistor (disambiguation). Assorted discrete transistors. Packages in order from top to bottom: TO 3, TO 126, TO 92, SOT 23 A transistor is a semiconductor device used to amplify and switch electronic signals and power. It… …   Wikipedia

  • Transistor models — Transistors are complicated devices. In order to ensure the reliable operation of circuits employing transistors, it is necessary to scientifically model the physical phenomena observed in their operation using transistor models. There exists a… …   Wikipedia

  • Transistor — Eine Auswahl an diskreten Transistoren in verschiedenen Gehäuseformen Ein Transistor ist ein elektronisches Bauelement zum Schalten und Verstärken von elektrischen Signalen, ohne dabei mechanische Bewegungen auszuführen. Transistoren sind die… …   Deutsch Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”