Stress test for grown bad blocks

• Main Authors: Liu, Longju, Amin, Parth, Yuan, Jiahui, Islam, Sujjatul, Puthenthermadam, Sarath
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 23.04.2024
• Subjects: INFORMATION STORAGE; PHYSICS; STATIC STORES

Technology is disclosed herein for detecting grown bad blocks in a non-volatile storage system. A stress test may accelerate stressful conditions on the memory cells and thereby provide for early detection of grown bad blocks. The stress test may include applying a program voltage to a selected word line and a stress voltage that is less than a nominal boosting voltage to a word line adjacent one side of the selected word line. The combination of the program voltage and the stress voltage may generate an e-field that is stronger than an e-field that would be generated in a normal program operation, thereby accelerating the stress on the memory cells. The stress test mat further include programming all of the memory cells to a relatively high threshold voltage, which may create additional stress on the memory cells.