Design, fabrication and characterisation of arrays of low-voltage, non-volatile, III-V memories

Static random access memory (SRAM), dynamic random access memory (DRAM) and Flash have complementary characteristics that make them well suited to their specialised roles in cache, active memory and data storage, respectively. Nevertheless, the concept of a 'universal memory' that combines the best features of each, i.e. fast, low-voltage, cheap, non-volatile, non-destructive read and high endurance has been a long-standing aspiration of the industrial and academic research communities. This project will follow on from very recent work in which the operation of large-scale (10 micron feature size) non-volatile III-V memory cells with non-destructive read was demonstrated at room-temperature. The objective will be to assess the suitability of the memory cells for implementation in different architectures (e.g. NAND Flash, NOR Flash and RAM), and to design, fabricate and characterise small arrays (2 x 2 and 4 x 4) of large-scale (10 micron feature size) memory cells.