Future Outlook of NAND Flash Technology for 40nm Node and Beyond

The NAND flash memory occupied 40% of the total flash memory market with an annual growth rate of 70% in 2004, while NOR flash achieved only more modest growth rate of 30%. It is expected that NAND flash will surpass the market share of NOR flash in the flash market for the first time in 2005. From the viewpoint of market trend, NAND flash will be more popular in future because of more diversified applications such as NHDD (NAND-HDD) and sub-notebook PC storage. In this paper, we review the critical barriers in further scaling down NAND flash to 40nm technology node and beyond. Then, breakthrough technologies are addressed to overcome the barriers. In addition, issues in performance and reliability of the high density NAND flash are discussed