{
  "slug": "read-reference-voltage",
  "term": "NAND read-reference voltage",
  "aliases": [],
  "definition": "A NAND read-reference voltage is a sensing voltage used to distinguish stored cell states during a read operation.",
  "note": "It is a decision boundary rather than the cell's threshold voltage. Error counts depend on how this boundary intersects state distributions [chen2021]. Temperature compensation may adjust read references, while cell-dependent responses limit a single correction [an2023]; choosing a different boundary is not the same operation as rewriting data.",
  "status": "shipping",
  "advantages": [],
  "limitations": [
    "A lower raw error count after adjusting the reference is not evidence that stored charge was restored."
  ],
  "related": [
    "read-retry",
    "data-retention",
    "cross-temperature-effect",
    "soft-decision-decoding"
  ],
  "supersedes": [],
  "supersededBy": [],
  "firstSeen": null,
  "lastSeen": null,
  "citations": [
    {
      "id": "chen2021",
      "title": "Chen, Chen, Lin, Kong, Liu, Zhan and Chen. Temperature Impacts on Endurance and Read Disturbs in Charge-Trap 3D NAND Flash Memories. Micromachines 12(10), 1152 (2021), sections 3-5. DOI: 10.3390/mi12101152.",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.3390/mi12101152",
      "accessed": "2026-10-13"
    },
    {
      "id": "an2023",
      "title": "An, Yoon, Go, Park, Kim, Kim and Lee. Effects of Poly-Si Grain Boundary on Retention Characteristics under Cross-Temperature Conditions in 3-D NAND Flash Memory. Micromachines 14(12), 2199 (2023), sections 2.1-2.2. DOI: 10.3390/mi14122199.",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.3390/mi14122199",
      "accessed": "2026-10-13"
    },
    {
      "id": "hesela",
      "title": "3D NAND retention: layer count is not a reliability rating",
      "url": "https://hesela.com/analyses/3d-nand-retention-evidence/#cross-temperature",
      "accessed": "2026-10-13"
    }
  ],
  "updated": "2026-10-13"
}