Fujio Masuoka (舛岡 富士雄) | |
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| Born | May 8, 1943 (1943-05-08) (age 82) |
| Alma mater | Tohoku University |
| Known for | Flash memory NOR flash NAND flash GAAFET |
| Awards | IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Electrical engineering |
| Institutions | Toshiba Tohoku University Unisantis |
| Doctoral advisor | Jun-ichi Nishizawa |
Fujio Masuoka (舛岡 富士雄,Masuoka Fujio; born May 8, 1943) is a Japanese engineer, who has worked forToshiba andTohoku University, and is currently chief technical officer (CTO) of Unisantis Electronics. He is best known as the inventor offlash memory, including the development of both theNOR flash andNAND flash types in the 1980s.[1] He also invented the firstgate-all-around (GAA)MOSFET (GAAFET) transistor, an early non-planar3D transistor, in 1988.
Masuoka attendedTohoku University inSendai,Japan, where he earned an undergraduate degree in engineering in 1966 and doctorate in 1971.[2]He joinedToshiba in 1971. There, he invented stacked-gate avalanche-injectionmetal–oxide–semiconductor (SAMOS) memory, a precursor toelectrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) andflash memory.[3][4] In 1976, he developeddynamic random-access memory (DRAM) with a doublepoly-Si structure. In 1977 he moved to Toshiba Semiconductor Business Division, where he developed 1 Mb DRAM.[3]
Masuoka was excited mostly by the idea ofnon-volatile memory, memory that would last even when power was turned off. The EEPROM of the time took very long to erase. He developed the "floating gate" technology that could be erased much faster. He filed apatent in 1980 along with Hisakazu Iizuka.[5][3]His colleague Shoji Ariizumi suggested the word "flash" because the erasure process reminded him of the flash of a camera.[6]The results (with capacity of only 8192 bytes) were published in 1984, and became the basis forflash memory technology of much larger capacities.[7][8] Masuoka and colleagues presented the invention ofNOR flash in 1984,[9] and thenNAND flash at theIEEE 1987 International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) held in San Francisco.[10] Toshiba commercially launched NAND flash memory in 1987.[11][12] Toshiba gave Masuoka a few hundred dollar bonus for the invention, and later tried to demote him.[13] But it was the American companyIntel which made billions of dollars in sales on related technology.[13] Toshiba's press department told Forbes that it was Intel that invented flash memory.[13]
In 1988, a Toshiba research team led by Masuoka demonstrated the firstgate-all-around (GAA)MOSFET (GAAFET) transistor. It was an early non-planar3D transistor, and they called it a "surrounding gate transistor" (SGT).[14][15][16][17][18] He became a professor at Tohoku University in 1994.[13]Masuoka received the 1997IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award of theInstitute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.[19]In 2004, Masuoka became the chief technical officer of Unisantis Electronics aiming to develop athree-dimensional transistor, based on his earlier surrounding-gate transistor (SGT) invention from 1988.[17][2]In 2006, he settled a lawsuit with Toshiba for ¥87m (about US$758,000).[20]
He has a total of 270 registered patents and 71 additional pending patents.[3] He has been suggested as a potential candidate for theNobel Prize in Physics, along withRobert H. Dennard who invented single-transistor DRAM.[21]
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