Patent ID: 9275744
Filing Date: 2016-03-01
CPC Classification: G11C

Claim Text:
1. A method comprising: heating an integrated circuit (IC) chip, disposed within an IC chip package, to an elevated temperature, said integrated circuit (IC) chip including a flash memory that includes blocks of flash memory cells, each of said flash memory cells including a control gate separated from a floating gate, which is separated from a channel region in a semiconductor substrate of a field effect transistor by a tunnel dielectric; applying a negative electric field to each of said blocks of flash memory cells at said elevated temperature, said negative electric field causing a trapped negative charge in said tunnel dielectric to quantum tunnel to said channel region, effecting a field effect transistor threshold voltage shift of said flash memory cells; terminating said applying of said negative electric field to each of said blocks of flash memory cells and then terminating said heating of said integrated circuit (IC) chip; allowing said integrated circuit (IC) chip to return to an ambient temperature; and retrieving data for each of said blocks of flash memory cells from a storage device and rewriting said data into each of said blocks of flash memory cells.