Sanitization of Data in Nanoscale Flash Memory by Thermal Erasing and Reuse of Storage

Abstract

This study, a thermal method for erasing and permanently destroying data stored in flash memory fabricated on a suspended silicon nanowire is demonstrated. An intentionally applied heat treatment is used to erase the data stored in the charge trap layer of the flash memory. The data destruction is verified and analyzed at a unit cell level as well as in a commercial off-the-shelf chip. Characteristics of memory performance and reliability are also investigated. Then, the feasibility of the proposed method is further evaluated for next generation 3-dimensional V-NAND.