Post-deposition anneal is very important for memory characteristics.Rothchild et al.have shown that compared to a post-deposition anneal (PDA) in N2 at 1000 ℃, a better data retention could be achieved in TANOS memory devices after an O2oPDA at 1000 ℃.This performance improvement is due to the change of either the composition of the interface Si3N4/Al2O3 and/or of the bulk Al2O3 as compared to N2 annealing.However, high temperature N2 and O2 PDA may also affect the quality of SiO2 tunnel oxide differently, and thus the integrity of the whole gate stack.