Neutron-induced soft errors in advanced flash memories

Author

Cellere, G. ; Gerardin, S. ; Bagatin, M. ; Paccagnella, A. ; Visconti, A. ; Bonanomi, M. ; Beltrami, S. ; Roche, P. ; Gasiot, G. ; Sørensen, R. Harboe ; Virtanen, A. ; Frost, C. ; Fuochi, P. ; Andreani, C. ; Gorini, G. ; Pietropaolo, A. ; Platt, S.

Author_Institution

DEI, Padova Univ., Padova

fYear

2008

fDate

15-17 Dec. 2008

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

4

Abstract

Atmospheric neutrons are a known source of Soft Errors (SE), in static and dynamic CMOS memories. This paper shows for the first time that atmospheric neutrons are able to induce SE in Flash memories as well. Detailed experimental results provide an explanation linking the Floating Gate (FG) cell SE rate to the physics of the neutron-matter interaction. The neutron sensitivity is expected to increase with the number of bits per cell and the reduction of the feature size, but the SE issue is within the limit of current ECC capabilities and will remain so in the foreseeable future.

Keywords

CMOS memory circuits; error correction codes; flash memories; neutron effects; radiation hardening (electronics); CMOS memory; atmospheric neutron; error correction code; flash memory; floating gate cell; neutron-induced soft errors; neutron-matter interaction; Error correction codes; Flash memory; IEC standards; Intersymbol interference; Joining processes; Laboratories; Logic arrays; Logic testing; Neutrons; Research and development;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Electron Devices Meeting, 2008. IEDM 2008. IEEE International

Conference_Location

San Francisco, CA

ISSN

8164-2284

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-2377-4

Electronic_ISBN

8164-2284

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IEDM.2008.4796693

Filename

4796693