Enabling Radiation Hardness in Solid-State NAND Storage Utilizing a Laminated Ferroelectric Stack
NAND flash forms the core of modern solid-state storage, which is critical for data-intensive AI applications, yet charge-trap NAND suffers rapid threshold-voltage (<i>V</i><sub>th</sub>) degradation under ionizing radiation, causing reliability challenges for space and defense applications. Here we show that ferroelectric field-effect transistors (FeFETs) with laminated gate stacks offer a promising route to achieving radiation resilience in vertical NAND technology. We demonstrate that large-memory-window, vertical NAND-compatible laminated poly-silicon-channel FeFETs with an 8 nm Hf<sub>0.5</sub>Zr<sub>0.5</sub>O<sub>2</sub>/3 nm Al<sub>2</sub>O<sub>3</sub>/8 nm Hf<sub>0.5</sub>Zr<sub>0.5</sub>O<sub>2</sub> stack retain a full memory window and robust switching up to 10 Mrad(air) of the total ionizing dose (TID). Programmed and erased states show negligible TID-induced drift after 1 Mrad(air), while only the erased state degrades by ∼2 V at 10 Mrad(air). Technology computer-aided design (TCAD) modeling attributes these asymmetric shifts to state-dependent traps. Compared to charge-trap NAND, laminated FeFETs exhibit ∼30-fold lower <i>V</i><sub>th</sub> degradation per unit dose, positioning them as superior radiation-resilient storage candidates.
Authors
- J.M. Chen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-1383-7119)
- Dyutimoy Chakraborty (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1581-9564)
- Lance Fernandes (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0000-9896-8842)
- Minji Shon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0001-5498-037X)
- Mengkun Tian (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2790-7799)
- Salma Soliman
- Andrea Padovani (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1145-5257)
- Biswajit Ray (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5890-1368)
- Sanghyun Kang (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-4782-863X)
- Priyankka Gundlapudi Ravikumar (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7454-9088)
- Stuart E. Wodzro
- Asif Khan (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1135-4918)
- Minah Lee (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3800-802X)
- Joan Adler (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1765-1857)
- Shimeng Yu
- Zekai Wang
- Taeyoung Song
- Prasanna Venkatesan
- Jason Dean Yeager (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-6662-8591)
- Suman Datta
- Douglas Wolfe
Institutions
- University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (IT)
- Georgia Institute of Technology (US)
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- Scientific Methods (United States) (US)
- Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine (GB)
- Colorado State University (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nano Letters
- Published
- 2026-03-05
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c05947
- Primary Topic
- Advanced Data Storage Technologies
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00