Category: Vertical Structures

3D NAND: Who Will Make It and When?

SK hynix 3D NAND Cross Section(The following is an update of a post that originally ran on 13 December 2013.  It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series on The Memory Guy blog to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)

This series, originally run in 2013, has looked at 3D NAND technology in a good deal of technical depth.  At that time, the last question to be answered centered around the players and the timing that the technology would Continue reading “3D NAND: Who Will Make It and When?”

3D NAND’s Impact on the Equipment Market

Costs to Migrate to Next Lithography Node - Applied Materials (click to enlarge)(The following is an update of a post that originally ran on 6 December 2013.  It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series on The Memory Guy blog to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)

A very unusual side effect of the move to 3D NAND was Continue reading “3D NAND’s Impact on the Equipment Market”

How Do You Erase and Program 3D NAND?

How FN Tunneling Works. Cross section of a floating gate transistor. A word balloon on the control gate says "Strong Positive Potential", and word balloons on the source and drain say "Strong Negative Potential." Arrows show how the current would travel from the source and drain through the tunnel oxide to leave electrons on the floating gate, indicated by little circles, as the current tried to reach the control gate.

(The following is an update of a post that originally ran on 29 November 2013.  It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)

Some of my readers have asked: “How is 3D NAND Continue reading “How Do You Erase and Program 3D NAND?”

3D NAND: Benefits of Charge Traps over Floating Gates

Real California Cheese Seal(The following is an update of a post that originally ran on 22 November 2013.  It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)

A prior post in this series (3D NAND: Making a Vertical String) discussed the difficulties of Continue reading “3D NAND: Benefits of Charge Traps over Floating Gates”

Why is Everyone Jumping Into the HBM Market?

Close-up of a part of the market share chart shown in full later in the blog postAll of a sudden HBM is the leading topic of conversation.  Why is that?  A good number of people ask the Memory Guy that question.

Sure, the recent explosion of generative AI has been the key part of that interest, but there was even more that encouraged competition into this market at an accelerated pace.  The simple answer is that HBM, a DRAM used in AI applications, remained Continue reading “Why is Everyone Jumping Into the HBM Market?”

3D NAND: How do You Access the Control Gates?

Samsung's TCAT NAND Flash Wordline COnnections

(The following is an update of a post that originally ran on 8 November 2013.  It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)

One of the thornier problems Continue reading “3D NAND: How do You Access the Control Gates?”

Samsung’s New 280-Layer QLC NAND

Photo of two ball-grid array (BGA) packagesSamsung has just announced a QLC version of the 3D NAND that the company has calls its 9th-generation V-NAND.  This follows the April announcement that its TLC version of the 280-layer 9th-generation device was in volume production.

Naming the product a “Memory Solution for AI Era”, Samsung tells us that Continue reading “Samsung’s New 280-Layer QLC NAND”

An Alternative Kind of Vertical 3D NAND String

Samsung's TCAT 3D NAND flash(The following is an update of a post that originally ran on 8 November 2013.  It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)

My prior 3D NAND post explained how Toshiba’s BiCS cell works, using a silicon nitride charge trap to substitute for a floating gate.  This post will look at an alternative Continue reading “An Alternative Kind of Vertical 3D NAND String”

3D NAND: Making a Vertical String

Toshiba's Original BiCS Diagram - IEDM 2007(The following is an update of a post that originally ran on 1 November 2013.  It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)

Let’s look at how one form of 3D NAND is manufactured.  For this post we will explore Continue reading “3D NAND: Making a Vertical String”

What is a 3D NAND?

Applied Materials' Explanation of 3D NAND. A series of diagrams shows: 1) a horizontal NAND string, 2) That string being split into two, 3) The string being folded over at the split, and 4) the folded string being tilted on its end.(The following is an update of a post that originally ran 25 October 2013.  It was republished in 2024 as a part of a series to honor the 3D NAND inventors who have received the 2024 FMS Lifetime Achievement Award.)

In the prior post we discussed the need to go vertically into the body of the die, since NAND flash can not Continue reading “What is a 3D NAND?”

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