Design and implementation of a measurement unit for laser testing of semiconductor memories

A system to monitor pulsed laser beams on semiconductor EPROM, EEPROM and RAM devices is presented. The laser beams can generate single event effects (SEE), which are detected by reading the memory cells during or after laser irradiation. Initial user-defined or preconfigured bit patterns are saved on memory cells before laser pulse strikes. A Visual Basic application running on a computer communicates with the hardware in order to start the writing/reading operations, visualize the cell contents and save the obtained results in files for post-processing. Data related to first tests carried out on an EPROM with a 1 picosecond laser are presented and discussed.