is a Japanese engineer, who has worked for

Toshiba , commonly known as Toshiba and stylized as TOSHIBA, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. Its diversified products and services include power, industrial and social infrastructure systems, ...

and

Tohoku University , or is a Japanese national university located in Sendai, Miyagi in the Tōhoku Region, Japan. It is informally referred to as . Established in 1907, it was the third Imperial University in Japan and among the first three Designated National ...

, and is currently chief technical officer (CTO) of Unisantis Electronics. He is best known as the inventor of flash memory, including the development of both the NOR flash and

NAND flash Flash memory is an electronic non-volatile computer memory storage medium that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. The two main types of flash memory, NOR flash and NAND flash, are named for the NOR and NAND logic gates. Both use ...

types in the 1980s. He also invented the first gate-all-around (GAA) MOSFET (

GAAFET A multigate device, multi-gate MOSFET or multi-gate field-effect transistor (MuGFET) refers to a metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) that has more than one gate on a single transistor. The multiple gates may be contro ...

) transistor, an early non-planar 3D transistor, in 1988.

Biography

Masuoka attended

in Sendai, Japan, where he earned an undergraduate degree in engineering in 1966 and doctorate in 1971. He joined

in 1971. There, he invented stacked-gate avalanche-injection

metal–oxide–semiconductor The metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET, MOS-FET, or MOS FET) is a type of field-effect transistor (FET), most commonly fabricated by the controlled oxidation of silicon. It has an insulated gate, the voltage of which d ...

(SAMOS) memory, a precursor to electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) and flash memory. In 1976, he developed dynamic random-access memory (DRAM) with a double poly-Si structure. In 1977 he moved to Toshiba Semiconductor Business Division, where he developed 1 Mb DRAM. Masuoka was excited mostly by the idea of

non-volatile memory Non-volatile memory (NVM) or non-volatile storage is a type of computer memory that can retain stored information even after power is removed. In contrast, volatile memory needs constant power in order to retain data. Non-volatile memory typi ...

, 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 a

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...

in 1980 along with Hisakazu Iizuka. His colleague Shoji Ariizumi suggested the word "flash" because the erasure process reminded him of the flash of a camera. The results (with capacity of only 8192 bytes) were published in 1984, and became the basis for flash memory technology of much larger capacities. Masuoka and colleagues presented the invention of NOR flash in 1984, and then

at the ''

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operat ...

1987 International Electron Devices Meeting'' (IEDM) held in San Francisco. Toshiba commercially launched NAND flash memory in 1987. Toshiba gave Masuoka a few hundred dollar bonus for the invention, and later tried to demote him. But it was American company

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

which made billions of dollars in sales on related technology. Toshiba press department told Forbes that it was Intel that invented flash memory. In 1988, a Toshiba research team led by Masuoka demonstrated the first gate-all-around (GAA) MOSFET (

) transistor. It was an early non-planar 3D transistor, and they called it a "surrounding gate transistor" (SGT). He became a professor at Tohoku University in 1994. Masuoka received the 1997 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. In 2004, Masuoka became the chief technical officer of Unisantis Electronics aiming to develop a three-dimensional transistor, based on his earlier surrounding-gate transistor (SGT) invention from 1988. In 2006, he settled a lawsuit with Toshiba for ¥87m (about US$758,000). He has a total of 270 registered patents and 71 additional pending patents. He has been suggested as a potential candidate for the

Nobel Prize in Physics ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , alt = A golden medallion with an embossed image of a bearded man facing left in profile. To the left of the man is the text "ALFR•" then "NOBEL", and on the right, the text (smaller) "NAT•" then " ...

, along with

Robert H. Dennard Robert Heath Dennard (born September 5, 1932) is an American electrical engineer and inventor. Biography Dennard was born in Terrell, Texas, U.S. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University, ...

who invented single-transistor DRAM.

Recognition

*1997 - IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award *2007 -

Medal with Purple Ribbon are medals awarded by the Government of Japan. They are awarded to individuals who have done meritorious deeds and also to those who have achieved excellence in their field of work. The Medals of Honor were established on December 7, 1881, and we ...

*2013 - Person of Cultural Merit *2016 - Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold and Silver Star *2018 - Honda Prize

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Masuoka, Fujio 1943 births Japanese inventors Living people People from Takasaki, Gunma Tohoku University alumni Tohoku University faculty