Integrator-based current sensing circuit for reading memory cells

Near-ground sensing of non-volatile memory (NVM) cells is performed on a selected NVM cell by applying a potential to a first terminal, coupling a second terminal to ground, and then decoupling the second terminal and passing the resulting cell current to an integrator, which generates a correspondi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author SARIG EREZ
Format Patent
LanguageEnglish
Published 09.10.2007
Subjects
INFORMATION STORAGE
PHYSICS
STATIC STORES
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Summary:Near-ground sensing of non-volatile memory (NVM) cells is performed on a selected NVM cell by applying a potential to a first terminal, coupling a second terminal to ground, and then decoupling the second terminal and passing the resulting cell current to an integrator, which generates a corresponding sense voltage. The amount of cell current (and resulting sense voltage) is controlled by the programmed/erased state of the NVM cell. The sense voltage is compared with a reference voltage to determine the cell's programmed/erased state. Current through neighbor cells is redirected to the sensing circuit using a special Y decoder to minimize the neighbor effect.
Bibliography:Application Number: US20050304168