Towards a Generic Representation of Heavy Ion Tracks to be Used in Engineering SEE Simulation Tools

A methodology is proposed to generate a database implementable in engineering SEE simulation tools that would allow to represent any heavy ion track from a minimal set of proton tracks and simple scaling formula. The validity of this scaling approach is checked by comparing “real” heavy ion tracks calculated with Geant4 and tracks scaled from proton ones at the same energy per nucleon. Some differences appear in the track core, which extension increases when the energy decreases and the overlayer thickness increases. The impact of these differences in the track structure on the transistor response is explored using TCAD simulation on different technology generations. Significant differences appear for the most integrated structures and lower energies, while the scaling is valid for all simulated technologies and overlayer thicknesses at high energy. Finally, results from TCAD simulations using scaled tracks are compared to experimental data for some transistor structures and ion energies, with very good agreement for all presented cases.