12 Sept 06

Samsung’s new flash memory development has extended maximum memory capacity of NAND flash memories to 256 MB and a scaling down to 20 nano meters.

Samsung has recently announced successful development of 32 GB nand flash at 40 nm scales using technology called Charge Trap Flash (CTF). Generally all NAND flash chips will have a floating gate but here in this case, it’s floating gate is replaced by “holding chamber” of the non-conductive layer of the flash memory composed of silicon nitride (SiN). The advantages are improved reliability and better control of storage current.

With Floating gate the scaling can go down only up to 50 nm level  and maximum memory capacity of 16 GB.      But with CTF, scales down to 20nm and a memory size of 256 MB will be the limit.