FM - International Conference
Novel Non-volatile Inorganic Memory Devices: materials, concepts and applications

Non-volatile memory devices are currently key elements of several electronics and portable systems (digital camera, solid state disks, smartphones, computers, e-books, tablets,..) and their market has been increasing exponentially in the last decade. Even though the Flash memory represents today the leading technology, to allow its scalability down to the 16 nm technology node and beyond, increased costs and new architectures are necessary. Therefore, several emerging non-volatile memory concepts, also exploiting new storage mechanisms, are under investigation to achieve better performance, higher scalability, density and speed than Flash, as well as to address low power consumption, 3D/cross bar architecture, low thermal budget, and compatibility with flexible substrates and embedded systems. For the high-density non-volatile memories toward a 3D cross-point architecture it is also necessary to develop an appropriate two-terminal selector device, such as mixed ionic electronic conductor, oxide-based and polysilicon diodes or threshold switch. Finally, the new paradigm is not only to pursue the standard downscaling of non-volatile memories in terms of minimum size and integration density, which is approaching physical limits, but also to address new strategies towards functional diversification of electronics devices. One important aspect will be to develop memory storage concepts that can integrate multiple functionalities provided by novel materials, and to fabricate devices that in addition to non-volatile storage are able, for instance, to perform reconfigurable operations and emulating brain functions.
This conference, that follows and enlarges the sessions held on the subject in the frames of previous CIMTEC Conferences, will address recent advances on inorganic non-volatile memory devices with focus on innovative storage concepts beyond Flash and charge based memories, new materials and devices, integration schemes and selectors for the storage elements, understanding and modelling of new physical mechanisms for data storage, down to the nanoscale.