US Patent 7825459 Method of operating a SONOS memory device

A silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon (SONOS) memory device includes a memory type transistor including a gate with a SONOS structure on a semiconductor substrate. The gate is formed by sequentially stacking a tunneling oxide layer, a memory node structure including a trap site having nano-sized trap elements in which charges passing through the tunneling oxide layer are trapped, and a gate electrode. The nano-sized trap elements may be a crystal layer composed of nanocrystals that are separated from one another to trap the charges. The memory node structure may include additional memory node layers which are isolated from the nano-sized trap elements.