Floating-gate MOSFET

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The floating-gate MOSFET (FGMOS), also known as a floating-gate MOS transistor or floating-gate transistor, is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) where the gate is electrically isolated, creating a floating node in direct current, and a number of secondary gates or inputs are deposited above the floating gate (FG) and are electrically isolated from it. These inputs are only capacitively connected to the FG. Since the FG is surrounded by highly resistive material, the charge contained in it remains unchanged for long periods of time, typically longer than 10 years in modern devices. Usually Fowler-Nordheim tunneling or hot-carrier injection mechanisms are used to modify the amount of charge stored in the FG. The FGMOS is commonly used as a floating-gate memory cell, the digital storage element in EPROM, EEPROM and flash memory technologies. Other uses of the FGMOS include a neuronal computational element in neural networks, analog storage element, digital potentiometers and single-transistor DACs. The concept of using stored charge to gate transistors for electronic memory, was first separately patented by Jack Morton and Ian Ross in 1955 at Bell Labs. Both proposed to store charge in a ferroelectric on the surface of the semiconductor with the purpose of gating electricity for information storage. The MOSFET was invented at Bell Labs between 1955 and 1960, after Frosch and Derick discovered surface silicon dioxide passivation and used their discovery to create the first planar transistors. In 1961, Vasil Uzunoglu and Phillip Koenig, patented the idea applied to MOS-type transistors, also for solid memory.