Non-volatile flash memory with discrete bionanodot floating gate assembled by protein template

Nanotechnology. 2008 Jun 25;19(25):255201. doi: 10.1088/0957-4484/19/25/255201. Epub 2008 May 14.

Abstract

We demonstrated non-volatile flash memory fabrication by utilizing uniformly sized cobalt oxide (Co(3)O(4)) bionanodot (Co-BND) architecture assembled by a cage-shaped supramolecular protein template. A fabricated high-density Co-BND array was buried in a metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect-transistor (MOSFET) structure to use as the charge storage node of a floating nanodot gate memory. We observed a clockwise hysteresis in the drain current-gate voltage characteristics of fabricated BND-embedded MOSFETs. Observed hysteresis obviously indicates a memory operation of Co-BND-embedded MOSFETs due to the charge confinement in the embedded BND and successful functioning of embedded BNDs as the charge storage nodes of the non-volatile flash memory. Fabricated Co-BND-embedded MOSFETs showed good memory properties such as wide memory windows, long charge retention and high tolerance to repeated write/erase operations. A new pathway for device fabrication by utilizing the versatile functionality of biomolecules is presented.