FeRAM Reliability

Ferroelectric memory technology has advanced considerably over the past decade with progress reported in the areas of material properties, design innovations and process development. These advancements in turn have enabled demonstration of FeRAM devices exhibiting excellent area scaling, low voltage (< 1.5V) operation, and integration with advanced CMOS processes. As efforts to commercialize this technology for mainstream use increase, demonstration of high quality and reliability is essential. This tutorial will review the basic properties of state of the art FeRAM devices. Detailed review of relevant issues will be presented, including memory operation, architectures and methodologies for evaluating test structures, including capacitors and memory arrays.

John A. Rodriguez

John is a Component Reliability engineer for Ferroelectric Memory in the Silicon Technology Development organization of Texas Instruments in Dallas, TX. He received the MS and PhD degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rice University in 1995 and 1999, respectively. He joined TI-Houston in 1993, where he contributed to several generations of merged logic, analog, power, and non-volatile memory products. He has co-authored 20 conference and journal publications including invited papers in the IEEE TDMR Non-Volatile Memories Special Issue in 2004 and the Japan IEICE TCAD for Semiconductor Industries Special Issue in 1999. He is a recipient of the 2002 IEEE IRPS Outstanding Paper Award and served on the 2003 IRPS A/V committee as well as Session Co-chair for the 2003 International Symposium for Integrated Ferroelectrics.