Patent ID: 7012004

Claim:
A method of manufacturing a nonvolatile memory cell, comprising: providing a substrate; forming at least one gate structure on the substrate; forming diffusion regions in the substrate on either side of the gate structure; forming a conformal linear oxide layer on the gate structure and the substrate; forming a conformal nitride layer on the linear oxide layer; anisotropically etching the nitride layer and the linear oxide layer to expose a partial surface of the substrate and the top surface of the gate structure, thereby forming linear oxide spacers on the sides of the gate structure and nitride spacers on the sides of the linear oxide spacers; forming a conformal oxide layer on the linear oxide spacers, the nitride spacers, the gate structure and the substrate; and anisotropically etching the oxide layer to expose a partial surface of the substrate and the top surface of the gate structure, thereby forming oxide spacers on the sides of the nitride spacers, to form said nonvolatile memory cell; wherein, mobile ions are blocked from approaching the gate structure by means of the nitride spacers.