A scalable integration process for ultrafast two-dimensional flash memory

Abstract

Data-driven computing is highly dependent on memory performance. Flash memory is presently the dominant non-volatile memory technology but suffers from limitations in terms of speed. Two-dimensional (2D) materials could potentially be used to create ultrafast flash memory. However, due to interface engineering problems, ultrafast non-volatile performance is presently restricted to exfoliated 2D materials, and there is a lack of performance demonstrations with short-channel devices. Here, we report a scalable integration process for ultrafast 2D flash memory that can be used to integrate 1,024 flash-memory devices with a yield of over 98%. We illustrate the approach with two different tunnelling barrier configurations of the memory stack (HfO₂/Pt/HfO₂ and Al₂O₃/Pt/Al₂O₃) and using transferred chemical vapour deposition-grown monolayer molybdenum disulfide. We also show that the channel length of the ultrafast flash memory can be scaled down to sub-10 nm, which is below the physical limit of silicon flash memory. Our sub-10 nm devices offer non-volatile information storage (up to 4 bits) and robust endurance (over 10⁵).