Muon-Induced Soft Errors in SRAM Circuits in the Terrestrial Environment

Muon-induced soft errors are an increasing concern with technology scaling. However, the impact of terrestrial muons to the failure rate of circuits is unclear as methodologies have not yet been developed to extrapolate from accelerated measurements to the terrestrial environment. We introduce a new method to estimate muon-induced soft error rates (SERs) in SRAM devices by equating the muon energy spectrum with an alpha particle energy spectrum with an equivalent LET. Using this method, we estimate that, in the terrestrial environment, a muon-induced SER is smaller than that from packaging-related alpha particle and cosmic ray neutron components. FinFET SRAM devices will show a much reduced muon SER compared with planar transistors due to the minimization of charge collection associated with the fin geometry.