We propose the collective electron tunneling model in the electron injection process between the Nano Dots (NDs) and the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG). We report the collective motion of electrons between the 2DEG and the NDs based on the measurement of the Si-ND floating gate structure in the previous studies. However, the origin of this collective motion has not been revealed yet. We evaluate the proposed tunneling model by the model calculation. We reveal that our proposed model reproduces the collective motion of electrons. The insight obtained by our model shows new viewpoints for designing future nano-electronic devices.

Due to the aggressive scaling of non-volatile memories, “charge-trap memories” such as MONOS-type memories become one of the most important targets. One of the merits of such MONOS-type memories is that they can trap charges inside atomic-scale defect sites in SiN layers. At the same time, however, charge traps with atomistic scale tend to induce additional large structural changes. Hydrogen has attracted a great attention as an important heteroatom in MONOS-type memories. We theoretically investigate the basic characteristics of hydrogen-defects in SiN layer in MONOS-type memories on the basis of the first-principles calculations. We find that SiN structures with a hydrogen impurity tend to reveal reversible structural change during program/erase operation.