To provide a structure and method for healing a tunnel dielectric of non-volatile memory cells.

A semiconductor device comprises an array (12) of non-volatile memory cells (18). Each of the memory cells includes a tunnel dielectric (26), a well region including a first current electrode (28) and a second current electrode (30), and a control gate (20). The first and second current electrodes are adjacent to one side of the tunnel dielectric (26), and the control gate is adjacent to another side of the tunnel dielectric. A controller (16) is coupled to the memory cells (18). The controller (16) includes logic to determine when to perform a healing process in the tunnel dielectric (26) of the memory cells (18), and to apply a first voltage to the first current electrode of the memory cells during the healing process to remove trapped electrons and holes from the tunnel dielectric (26).