Heavy ion induced single hard errors on submicronic memories [for space application]

Recent heavy ion testing of high density SRAMs (static random access memories) has revealed radiation-induced hard errors: the errors show up as jammed bits in the memory. This phenomenon appears for high LET (linear transform energy) values. The single hard errors (SHEs) uniformly spread on the memory plane, disappear through UV escape, and anneal very slowly. It is believed that the errors are due to local ionizing dose deposition. This phenomenon could become an important limitation to space electronics design with the growing integration of the devices. The authors describe the test setup, the hard error characterization, and some first theoretical considerations for explaining this phenomenon