An account of Natural material based Non Volatile Memory Device

The development in electronic sector has brought a remarkable change in the life style of mankind. At the same time this technological advancement results adverse effect on environment due to the use of toxic and non degradable materials in various electronic devices. With the emergence of environmental problems, the green, reprogrammable, biodegradable, sustainable and environmental-friendly electronic devices have become one of the best solutions for protecting our environment from hazardous materials without compromising the growth of the electronic industry. Natural material has emerged as the promising candidate for the next generation electronic devices due to its easy processing, transparency, flexibility, abundant resources, sustainability, recyclability, and simple extraction. This review targets the characteristics, advancements, role, limitations, and prospects of using natural materials as the functional layer of a resistive switching memory device with a primary focus on the switching/memory properties. Among the available memory devices, resistive random access memory (RRAM), write once read many (WORM) unipolar memory etc. devices have a huge potential to become the non-volatile memory of the next generation owing to their simple structure, high scalability, and low power consumption. The motivation behind this work is to promote the use of natural materials in electronic devices and attract researchers towards a green solution of hazardous problems associated with the electronic devices.Comment: 32 pages, 8 figures, 2 table

Sub-2 nm platinum nanoparticles growth study and device applications

"May 2014."Thesis Supervisor: Dr. Shubhra Gangopadhyay.Includes vita.This work describes a tilted-target RF magnetron sputter deposition system to grow nanoparticles in a controlled way. With detailed characterization of ultra-high density (up to 1.1 ?�� 10[superscript 13] cm?�???) and ultra-small size Pt nanoparticles (0.5-2 nm), it explains their growth and crystalline properties on amorphous Al?��O?�� thin films. It is shown that Pt nanoparticle size and number density can be precisely engineered by varying selected experimental parameters such as target angle, sputtering power, substrate-surface-energy and time of deposition to control the energy of the metal atoms in the deposition flux. Based on rate equation modeling of nanoparticle growth, three distinct growth regimes, namely nucleation dependent, coalescence dependent and agglomeration dependent regimes, were observed. With this control over the growth regime, a myriad of nanoparticle configurations were observed for size dependent applications. We also demonstrate the use of these Pt NPs based floating gate devices for multi-level operation of a Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) Metal Oxide Semiconductor capacitor (MOSCAP) by controlled layer-by-layer charging. Finally, a novel application and the first demonstration of neutron sensors using Pt NP NVM MOS CAP using [superscript 10]B enriched dielectrics instead of Al?��O?�� are developed for their use in neutron detection. Initial results for neutron exposure on a functional [superscript 10]B enriched Pt NP embedded NVM device are shown, where dual layer devices exhibit a promising detection phenomena.Includes bibliographical references