Single event upset modeling with nuclear reactions in nanoscale electronics

In modern nano-scale technologies, circuits are increasingly sensitive to various kinds of perturbations. Soft errors, a concern for space applications in the past, are now a top reliability issue at ground level. Alpha particles and atmospheric neutrons induce single-event upsets (SEU), affecting memory cells, latches, and flip-flops, and single-event transients (SET), initiated in the combinational logic and captured by the latches and flip-flops associated with the outputs of this logic. Realistic treatment of the materials and geometries in the back-end-of-line (BEOL), including metallization layers, is essential for accurate modeling of particle-induced single event effects (SEEs). This paper describes new capabilities of CFDRC NanoTCAD mixed-mode simulator, which include interface and adaptive meshing to allow simulations of single event radiation effects with nuclear reactions and secondary particles computed by MRED (Monte Carlo Radiative Energy Deposition), a Geant4 based tool developed at Vanderbilt University. Neglecting the nuclear interaction processes may results in serious underestimation of the SEU error rate for modern technologies.