Irradiation damage in 2D and 3D NAND flash memories

NAND flash memories are in all electronic devices such as smartphones, SSD discs, USB keys, computers … The data that are stored inside might not be 100% safely removed with the classical software erasing and writing procedure, leading to the physical destruction of these electronic devices which has thus a high ecological impact due to the materials inside these devices. A solution to this problem is to erase the NAND Flash using X-rays but this may lead to some defects. According to the dose, these defects can be partially recovered but the limiting dose leading to unrecoverable defects such as cracks or holes on actual NAND Flash memories are not well known. This proposal aims at evaluating the dose limit that a NAND Flash memory can handle during X-ray irradiation before generating physical defects and characterise in 3D these defects using multiscale approach that are created using nano-holotomography with complementary 3D FIB analysis.