Advanced Memory Nanodevices for Energy Saving and Innovative Applications – AMNESIA

AMNESIA aims to conceive and develop new memory devices for future energy-conscious electronic products. The technical scope is to explore and demonstrate pioneering DRAM solutions in order to fulfill the requirements of these volatile memories in terms of electrical performances and scaling at the 22nm-technology node and beyond. AMNESIA will be focused on novel 1T-DRAMs (capacitor-less single-transistor DRAMs) based on floating-body effects in Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI)-like devices. The work includes the development of programming techniques and matrix array configurations.

Innovative solutions for high performance 1T-DRAMs (as compared with the conventional 1T-1C DRAM: transistor + storage capacitor) will be investigated and demonstrated experimentally: reduced bias levels and enhanced reliability, lower power consumption, increased retention time, high temperature operation.

AMNESIA will also explore the possibility to enrich the functionalities of the 1T-DRAMs by considering the possibility to store multiple bits and/or by providing a ‘unified’ memory, URAM. URAM uses only one transistor and can be operated indifferently as volatile (DRAM) as well as non-volatile memory (EEPROM, flash). URAM is based on the same principles used in SOI 1T-DRAM while the “non-volatile” charge is stored in a trapping medium. Hence, in a memory array, a single transistor can be allocated indifferently to one or to the other memory function which means that EEPROM and DRAM blocks can be merged for considerable size reduction.