7 ms·

This article is completely wrong. For every electron you place in the floating gate of the transistor, an electron is removed from the bulk or substrate of the

by eig 3y ago

This article is completely wrong. For every electron you place in the floating gate of the transistor, an electron is removed from the bulk or substrate of the device. The net weight is exactly the same, you are only moving electrons within the device.

rbanffy 3y ago
I was uncertain about this as well, but wouldn't the electron-depletion in the substrate be (slowly) replaced from the ground? In any case, the charge on the device would be negligible in any direction. It's a ridiculously small amount of charge when compared to the overall device, or even the substrate material of the flash memory cells. Would be fun to do an experiment though. Maybe in 100 years we'll be able to do that.
- eig 3y ago
  Funnily enough, there wouldn't be any "depletion from the ground" in the substrate either. If the charge in the substrate was removed and sent to ground, the charges in the gate would also disappear and be sent to ground simultaneously. In that case, the circuit has lost its stored valu. Ideally, this should never happen, and if it does the circuit is literally broken.
1letterunixname 3y ago
Yep. NOR and NAND flash are constructed differently, but programming/erasure and tunnel injection/release are changes in configuration rather than accumulation/release of charge. Core memory (ferrite bead), SRAM (4 transistors/bit) and DRAM (1 transistor with a pseudo capacitor/bit) would increase in relativistic weight depending on their state. The same is true of batteries, ultracaps, or anything that consumes or stores large amounts of energy. m = E/c^2. 1e17 J weighs about 1 kg. That's about the energy of 2 of the large nuclear weapons ever tested. Let's suppose we have an average largish lake, 100 km^3 or 1e14 kg of water, and we store it at average height of 60 m above a generator. PE=m*g*h. That 6e16 J of potential energy weighs 651g.

by eig 3y ago

rbanffy 3y ago

I was uncertain about this as well, but wouldn't the electron-depletion in the substrate be (slowly) replaced from the ground? In any case, the charge on the device would be negligible in any direction. It's a ridiculously small amount of charge when compared to the overall device, or even the substrate material of the flash memory cells. Would be fun to do an experiment though. Maybe in 100 years we'll be able to do that.

eig 3y ago
Funnily enough, there wouldn't be any "depletion from the ground" in the substrate either. If the charge in the substrate was removed and sent to ground, the charges in the gate would also disappear and be sent to ground simultaneously. In that case, the circuit has lost its stored valu. Ideally, this should never happen, and if it does the circuit is literally broken.

1letterunixname 3y ago

Yep. NOR and NAND flash are constructed differently, but programming/erasure and tunnel injection/release are changes in configuration rather than accumulation/release of charge. Core memory (ferrite bead), SRAM (4 transistors/bit) and DRAM (1 transistor with a pseudo capacitor/bit) would increase in relativistic weight depending on their state. The same is true of batteries, ultracaps, or anything that consumes or stores large amounts of energy. m = E/c^2. 1e17 J weighs about 1 kg. That's about the energy of 2 of the large nuclear weapons ever tested. Let's suppose we have an average largish lake, 100 km^3 or 1e14 kg of water, and we store it at average height of 60 m above a generator. PE=m*g*h. That 6e16 J of potential energy weighs 651g.