Abstract

 This work introduces silicon-doped boron nitride (BN) as an engineered energy barrier that suppresses the dead zone effect and improves spatial charge trapping efficiency. Silicon was incorporated into BN by in-situ ALD super-cycles, and the resulting Si-N bonds in BN generate higher density and deeper depth of electron traps. Energy band structure and Arrhenius analysis confirm the increase in electron trap depth, while device characteristics indicate enhanced trapping efficiency. Integrated into a scaled 4 nm SiN CTL, the silicon-doped BN barrier increases the program window without degrading erase characteristics and improves electron retention. These results indicate that an optimized Si-doped BN energy barrier enables XY-scaling without compromising memory performance.