US Patent 7651904 Methods of fabricating non-volatile memory devices including nanocrystals

Non-volatile memory devices can be fabricated by forming a tunnel dielectric layer on a semiconductor substrate, subjecting the semiconductor substrate having the tunnel dielectric layer to an atomic layer deposition (ALD) process to form nanocrystals on the tunnel dielectric layer, removing the semiconductor substrate having the nanocrystals from an atomic layer deposition chamber, forming a control gate dielectric layer on the semiconductor substrate having the nanocrystal, and forming a control gate electrode on the semiconductor substrate having the control gate dielectric layer.