Hot-electron injection driven by hole impact ionization in the
channel-to-drain junction of a p-channel MOSFET provides a new mechanism
for writing a floating-gate memory. Various pFET floating-gate structures
use a combination of this mechanism and electron tunneling to implement
nonvolatile analog memory, nonvolatile digital memory, or on-line
learning in silicon. The memory is nonvolatile because the devices use
electrically isolated floating gates to store electronic charge. The
devices enable on-line learning because the electron injection and
tunneling mechanisms that write the memory can occur during normal device
operation. The memory updates and learning are bidirectional because the
injection and tunneling mechanisms add and remove electrons from the
floating gate, respectively. Because the memory updates depend on both
the stored memory and the pFETs terminal voltages, and because they are
bidirectional, the devices can implement on-line learning functions.