Title :
Can Atmospheric Neutrons Induce Soft Errors in nand Floating Gate Memories?
Author :
Cellere, Giorgio ; Gerardin, Simone ; Bagatin, Marta ; Paccagnella, Alessandro ; Visconti, Angelo ; Bonanomi, Mauro ; Beltrami, Silvia ; Harboe-Sørensen, Reno ; Virtanen, Ari ; Roche, Philippe
Author_Institution :
Dipt. di Ing. dell´´Inf., Univ. di Padova, Padova
Abstract :
Atmospheric neutrons can interact with the matter inside a microelectronic chip and generate ionizing particles, which in turn can change the state of one or more memory bits [soft error (SE)]. In this letter, we show that SEs are possible in Flash memories, although with extremely low probabilities. While this problem will increase for future technologies, we do not expect SEs to be the reliability limiting factor for further floating gate scaling.
Keywords :
circuit reliability; flash memories; logic gates; neutron effects; NAND floating gate memories; atmospheric neutrons; flash memories; floating gate scaling; reliability limiting factor; soft errors; Atmospheric neutron; flash memories; soft error (SE) rate;
Journal_Title :
Electron Device Letters, IEEE
DOI :
10.1109/LED.2008.2009885
