Monte Carlo simulation of radiation effects in microelectronics

In this paper, we describe a Monte Carlo method for computing the frequency and characteristics of single event effects in microelectronic devices. The method combines detailed physical modeling of individual radiation events, device simulations to estimate charge collection, and circuit simulations to determine the system-level effects of collected charge. A mathematical analysis of the Monte Carlo method is given, and with appropriate assumptions is shown to reduce to the rectangular parallelepiped (RPP) rate prediction method. A computer implementation of the method is described and results of a sample calculation are presented.