An ETOX cell that has improved injection of electrons from a forward biased deep n-well to p-well junction underneath the channel area of a triple-well ETOX cell during substrate hot electron (SHE) programming. The ETOX cell has a control gate, a floating gate, a deep n-well formed in the substrate, a buried n+ layer in the deep n-well, a p-well formed in the n-well and atop the buried n+ layer, a drain implant formed in the p-well, and a source implant formed in the p-well. The buried n+ layer enhances the parasitic bipolar action between the n+ source/drain (as collector), the p-well (as base), and the buried n+ layer (as emitter). The parasitic transistor amplifies the amount of seed electrons injected into the p-well, which in turn results in significantly faster programming of the ETOX cell.