Enabling Radiation Hardness in Solid-State NAND Storage Utilizing a Laminated Ferroelectric Stack

Lance Fernandes; Stuart Wodzro; Prasanna Venkatesan; Priyankka Ravikumar; Ming-Yen Lee; Minji Shon; Dyutimoy Chakraborty; Taeyoung Song; Sanghyun Kang; Salma Soliman; Mengkun Tian; Jason Yeager; Jackson Adler; Jiayi Chen; Zekai Wang; Douglas Wolfe; Shimeng Yu; Andrea Padovani; Suman Datta; Biswajit Ray; Asif Khan

doi:10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c05947

Enabling Radiation Hardness in Solid-State NAND Storage Utilizing a Laminated Ferroelectric Stack

Nano Lett. 2026 Mar 18;26(10):3390-3397. doi: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c05947. Epub 2026 Mar 5.

Authors

Lance Fernandes¹, Stuart Wodzro¹, Prasanna Venkatesan¹, Priyankka Ravikumar¹, Ming-Yen Lee¹, Minji Shon¹, Dyutimoy Chakraborty¹, Taeyoung Song¹, Sanghyun Kang¹, Salma Soliman¹, Mengkun Tian², Jason Yeager³, Jackson Adler³, Jiayi Chen¹, Zekai Wang¹, Douglas Wolfe³, Shimeng Yu¹, Andrea Padovani⁴, Suman Datta¹, Biswajit Ray⁵, Asif Khan¹

Affiliations

¹ School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, United States.
² Institute of Matter and Systems, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, United States.
³ Department of Material Science and Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, United States.
⁴ Department of Engineering Sciences and Methods, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, 41121 Reggio Emilia, Italy.
⁵ Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, United States.

Abstract

NAND flash forms the core of modern solid-state storage, which is critical for data-intensive AI applications, yet charge-trap NAND suffers rapid threshold-voltage (V_th) degradation under ionizing radiation, causing reliability challenges for space and defense applications. Here we show that ferroelectric field-effect transistors (FeFETs) with laminated gate stacks offer a promising route to achieving radiation resilience in vertical NAND technology. We demonstrate that large-memory-window, vertical NAND-compatible laminated poly-silicon-channel FeFETs with an 8 nm Hf_0.5Zr_0.5O₂/3 nm Al₂O₃/8 nm Hf_0.5Zr_0.5O₂ stack retain a full memory window and robust switching up to 10 Mrad(air) of the total ionizing dose (TID). Programmed and erased states show negligible TID-induced drift after 1 Mrad(air), while only the erased state degrades by ∼2 V at 10 Mrad(air). Technology computer-aided design (TCAD) modeling attributes these asymmetric shifts to state-dependent traps. Compared to charge-trap NAND, laminated FeFETs exhibit ∼30-fold lower V_th degradation per unit dose, positioning them as superior radiation-resilient storage candidates.

Keywords: ferroelectric NAND; large memory window; reliability; γ radiation.