Abstract
Charge retention in SAMOS structures at elevated temperatures is effectively described by a thermionic electron emission model from a floating polysilicon gate into the surrounding oxide. Experimental results showed sufficiently good agreement with the theoretical model. The barrier height and collision frequency derived from the experiments are reasonable (1.24 eV and 2.5×104/sec, respectively). Long term data retention in floating gate EPROM's can also be predicted by this model.