Structured Materials Industries Wins Grant to Develop Nonvolatile Memory

Structured Materials Industries, Inc. (SMI) has been awarded a Phase I SBIR by the Air Force to develop space qualified nonvolatile memory leveraging a commercial fabrication technology. SMI will demonstrate an EEPROM memory array scalable to 16 – 32M using SMI’s ferroelectric cell technology. The ferroelectric performance is orders of magnitude faster than standard silicon tunneling memories and operates without charge pumps at existing supply voltages, which is extremely attractive for use in standard silicon architectures. Integration will be performed on a standard commercial silicon fabrication line at 0.18um line width geometry and is the first step in producing hardened nonvolatile memory for aerospace applications of large density arrays. SMI’s EEPROM design is in collaboration with expert designers using established hardened by design (HBD) techniques for maximum resistance to adverse effects of radiation. In future, products produced at the 0.90nm technology node will be manufactured within commercial foundry facilities and directly compete in the stand-alone and embedded memory markets. This effort has broken the barrier to establishing a state-of-the-art manufacturing and design for advanced radiation hardened nonvolatile memory and will be applicable to both aerospace and commercial end users desiring high-speed low power nonvolatile memory.