Sanitization of Data in Nanoscale Flash Memory by Thermal Erasing and Reuse of Storage

This study, a thermal method for erasing and permanently destroying data stored in flash memory fabricated on a suspended silicon nanowire is demonstrated. An intentionally applied heat treatment is used to erase the data stored in the charge trap layer of the flash memory. The data destruction is verified and analyzed at a unit cell level as well as in a commercial off‐the‐shelf chip. Characteristics of memory performance and reliability are also investigated. Then, the feasibility of the proposed method is further evaluated for next generation 3‐dimensional V‐NAND. A thermal erasing method for destroying the data stored in flash memory is demonstrated. The effectiveness of the method is examined in two ways. The first checked the physical loss of the stored electrons in the unit cell, and the other demonstrated the practicality of the method using an off‐the‐shelf flash memory chip. The proposed method introduces a new approach for enhancing the security of flash memory against cyber‐crime.