The development of a nonvolatile ferroelectric memory with nondestructive readout

For the past three years, a project group at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory has been developing a nonvolatile memory that uses novel ferroelectric technology. The advancements made could prove to give ferroelectrics a new lease on life as a memory technology by overcoming some of the inherent limitations that have hampered their use in the past. The primary advancement of the project has been the development of a nondestructive readout (NDRO) technique which exploits the hysteresis exhibited by the small-signal capacitance of ferroelectrics. This has led to the development of an NDRO sense amplifier which has evolved from circuit board prototypes to a fully custom CMOS part. A multichip module (MCM) was employed to integrate the CMOS technology with a ferroelectric technology. This thesis develops several models for the behavior of ferroelectrics, examines how ferroelectric memory compares to the more mainstream silicon-based memory technologies, and chronicles the project from the inception of the NDRO sensing technique through the production of the various experimental parts.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

1994

Author dc:creator

• Chadwick, Thomas B. (Thomas Burhoe)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Anthony Marques and James E. Chung.

• Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/9096

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/9096