Angular Dependence of Heavy Ion Effects in Floating Gate Memory Arrays

Single, high energy, high LET, ions impacting on a Floating gate array on grazing or near-grazing angles lead to the creation of long traces of FGs with corrupted information. Up to 30 consecutive devices can be involved in the trace left by a single ion. We demonstrate that charge collection at multiple nodes can be expected as the technology advances. One of the major implications is that the widely adopted cosine law should be used with great care when dealing with modern devices, with sizes smaller than 100 nm.