1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a non-volatile memory device, more particularly to a non-volatile memory device having a short erasing time and high reliability, and a fabrication method of the same.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Generally, a non-volatile memory device is a memory device whose threshold voltage is changed according to the charging or discharging of a floating gate that is electrically insulated.
A programming operation of a conventional non-volatile memory device is performed by a channel hot electron (CHE) method in which hot electrons generated in a drain region when the device is operated in its saturation state are injected into the floating gate through a gate oxide film. An erasing operation is performed by emitting electrons from a floating gate into a channel or a gate oxide film of an overlapped region between a source and the floating gate. In order to perform the erasing operation by using the gate oxide film, the gate oxide film has to be very thin (less than 100 xc3x85), yet it is very difficult to obtain a highly reliable fabrication of thin gate oxide film.
To improve the reliability of the gate oxide film, a method for emitting charges of the floating gate by using an additional erasing gate has been introduced. In most conventional devices using the additional erasing gate, since polysilicon is used for an oxide film of the floating gate, the oxide film of the floating gate is thicker than the gate oxide film of the channel region and the fabrication process thereof is relatively easy. However, the erasing method using the erasing gate requires a high voltage because of the thick oxide film of the floating gate. Furthermore, in a read operation, electrons are undesirably injected into the floating gate from the erasing gate, causing a threshold voltage of the device to be undesirably changed.
FIG. 1a is a cross sectional view showing a structure of a simple stacked non-volatile memory device of the conventional art, and FIG. 1b is a symbolic structure of the non-volatile memory device cell of the conventional art.
Referring to FIG. 1a, a tunneling insulation film 2 is formed on a p-type semiconductor substrate 1 and a floating gate 3 is formed on the tunneling insulation film 2. A dielectric layer 4 is formed on the floating gate 3 and a control gate 5 is formed on the dielectric layer 4. In surfaces of the p-type substrate 1 at both sides of the floating gate 3, n-type source region 6a and n-type drain region 6b are formed, respectively.
An effective cell size of a simple stack non-volatile memory device having a structure of FIG. 1a is small, but a coupling constant of the control gate 5 also becomes undesirably small. Furthermore, a serious problem is that the coupling constant becomes smaller as the effective cell size becomes smaller. Therefore, in order to prevent the coupling constant from becoming smaller, several attempts of forming an Oxe2x80x94Nxe2x80x94O (oxide-nitride-oxide) film as the dielectric film 4 between the floating gate 3 and the control gate 5 have been made, but the overall process for forming the Oxe2x80x94Nxe2x80x94O film is complex and a high annealing process is required.
As shown in FIG. 1a and FIG. 1b, a non-volatile memory cell includes a floating gate 3, a control gate 5 for controlling the amount of charges supplied to the floating gate 3 for programming (e.g., data write) operation, and a field effect transistor is used for reading (or verifying) the amount of charges carrier provided to the floating gate 3 during the programming operation. The field effect transistor includes the floating gate 3, the source 6a, the drain 6b, and channel 7 between the drain 6b and the source 6a. 
The conventional art non-volatile memory cell constructed as described above is operated by the current between the drain 6b and the source 6a when the control gate 5 and the drain 6b are driven by voltages that are high enough to guarantee the operation of the cell. At this time, the current between the drain 6b and the source 6a is compared with a reference current. If the current is equal to or less than the reference current, a programming completion signal is generated. A conventional non-volatile memory device and the fabrication method of the same will be explained as follows.
FIG. 2 is a cross sectional view showing the structure of a conventional non-volatile memory device. As shown in FIG. 2, the conventional non-volatile memory device comprises a first floating gate 13 formed on an insulation film 12 which is formed on a predetermined portion of a p-type semiconductor substrate 11; a first insulation film 14 formed on an entire surface of the substrate 11 including the first floating gate 13, with a contact hole to expose a predetermined portion of the first floating gate 13; a second floating gate 16a formed in the contact hole and on the first insulation film 14 adjacent to the contact hole; a second insulation film 17, a control gate 18a and a cap insulator 19 being sequentially stacked so as to have an alignment with one side of the second floating gate 16a and exposed surface of the other side of the second floating gate 16a; a third insulation film sidewall 21 formed at both sides of the cap insulator 19, the control gate 18a and the second insulation film 17; a tunneling insulation film 22 formed on the exposed surface of the second floating gate 16a; and an erasing gate 23 formed adjacent to the tunneling insulation film 22.
FIG. 3a to FIG. 3g are cross sectional views showing the fabrication process for the conventional non-volatile memory device.
As shown in FIG. 3a, a gate insulation film 12 is formed on a p-type semiconductor substrate 11. A first polysilicon layer for a floating gate is formed on the gate insulation film 12. By selectively removing the first polysilicon layer by a photolithography process, the first floating gate 13 having a predetermined size is formed. The first floating gate 13 is formed as an island shape by patterning the first polysilicon layer in a column direction by the photolithography process and then patterning the patterned polysilicon layer in the direction perpendicular to the column direction by photolithography process. At both sides of the first floating gate 13, insulation sidewalls (not shown in FIG. 3a) are formed and electrically insulate the first floating gate 13. Impurity ions of different conductivity type from the semiconductor substrate 11 are injected into the surface regions of the semiconductor substrate 11 at both sides of the first floating gate 13. These regions are used as a source region and a drain region (not shown in FIG. 3a), respectively.
As shown in FIG. 3b, on the entire surface of the semiconductor substrate 11 including the first floating gate 13, a first insulation film 14 composed of oxide film, nitride film/oxide film using low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD), or their combination is formed. A contact hole 15 is formed by selectively removing a portion of the first insulation film 14 by a photolithography process so that a predetermined portion of the top surface of the first floating gate 13 is exposed.
As shown in FIG. 3c, a second polysilicon layer 16 for a second floating gate is formed over the entire surface of the semiconductor substrate 11 including the contact hole 15. In this case, in order to form the second polysilicon layer 16, a doped polysilicon layer may be used or an undoped polysilicon layer may be deposited first and then doped by ion injection method or diffusion source doping method.
Over the entire surface of the semiconductor substrate 11 including the second polysilicon layer 16, a second insulation film 17 of 100xcx9c500 xc3x85 thickness composed of a silicon oxide film or a combination of LPCVD oxide film and silicon nitride film is formed. Subsequently, a third polysilicon layer 18 for a control gate is formed on the second insulation film 17. A cap insulation film composed of an oxide film, a nitride film or a combination of the oxide film and the nitride film is formed on the third polysilicon film 18. And then, the cap insulation film is selectively removed by photolithography process to form a cap insulator 19.
As shown in FIG. 3d, a photoresist 20 is formed over the entire surface of the semiconductor substrate 11 including the cap insulator 19. Thereafter, the photoresist 20 is patterned by exposing and developing process. By using the patterned photoresist 20 and the cap insulator 19 as a mask, the third polysilicon layer 18 is selectively removed, and therefrom a control gate 18a is formed.
Thereafter, as shown in FIG. 3e, the photoresist 20 is removed. Then, a blank etching is performed using the cap insulator 19 as a mask. Portions of the second insulation film 17 and the second polysilicon layer 16 are selectively removed by blank etching, so that a second floating gate 16a is formed. More particularly, a part of the control gate 18a not covered by the cap insulator 19 is selectively removed and at the same time, the second insulation film 17 under the exposed part of the control gate 18a is also removed. Thus, the control gate 18a and the second insulation film 17 are formed to have the same width, and the second floating gate 16a is formed to have the original width of the control gate 18a depicted in FIG. 3d. 
As the result, one side of the second floating gate 16a is aligned with the second insulation film 17, the control gate 18a and the cap insulator 19. Portions of the other side of the second floating gate 16a is exposed outwardly.
As shown in FIG. 3f, a third insulation film such as an oxide film is formed over the entire surface of the semiconductor substrate 11 including the cap insulator 19 and then an etch back process is performed, so that third insulation film sidewalls 21 are formed on both sides of the cap insulator 19, the control gate 18a and the second floating gate 16a. Subsequently, a thermal oxidation process is performed over the semiconductor substrate 11 to grow a tunneling insulation film 22 on a surface of the second floating gate 16a not being covered by the control gate 18a. 
As shown FIG. 3g, a third polysilicon layer is formed over the semiconductor substrate 11 and selectively removed by a photolithography process to form an erasing gate 23 adjacent to the tunneling insulation film 22. The erasing gate 23 is patterned in the same direction as the control gate 18a, and then the memory device is completed by using a general process such as a contact and wiring process.
However, the conventional non-volatile memory device and the fabrication method of the memory device have the following problems.
First, when the non-volatile memory device having an erasing gate performs an erase operation, a high voltage is required to make electrons tunnel into the tunneling insulation film 22. Second, when a read operation is performed in the non-volatile memory device, undesired electrons flow into the floating gate from the erasing gate and as a result, a threshold voltage of the non-volatile memory device is increased.
The present invention is directed to solve the aforementioned problems and provide a non-volatile memory device and its fabrication method allowing the device to have a short erasing time and high reliability.
Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth in the description that follows, and in part will be apparent from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention. Other advantages of the invention will be realized and attained by the structure particularly pointed out in the written description and claims hereof as well as the appended drawings.
To achieve these and other advantages in accordance with the present invention, as embodied and broadly described, a non-volatile memory device in accordance with the present invention comprises a floating gate formed over a semiconductor substrate so as to have one horn-like edge portion, a control gate formed over the floating gate except for the horn-like edge portion, sidewall spacers composed of an oxidation resist insulation film and formed on both sides of the control gate and the floating gate, a horn-like tunneling insulation film on the horn-like edge portion of the floating gate, and an erasing gate formed on the tunneling insulation film.
A fabrication method of the non-volatile memory device in accordance with the present invention comprises the step of forming a floating gate over a semiconductor substrate, the step of forming a control gate over the floating gate so that the control gate is aligned with a first portion of the floating gate and a surface of a second portion of the floating gate is not covered by the control gate, the step of forming sidewall spacers composed of oxidation resist insulation film on both sides of the control gate and the floating gate, the step of forming a horn-like tunneling insulation film on the exposed surface of the floating gate and at the same time, forming a horn-like edge of the second portion of the floating gate, and the step of forming an erasing gate on the tunneling insulation film.
It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory, and are intended to provide further explanation of the invention as claimed.
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