Criticality of Low-Energy Protons in Single-Event Effects Testing of Highly-Scaled Technologies

Author

Pellish, Jonathan A. ; Marshall, Paul W. ; Rodbell, Kenneth P. ; Gordon, Michael S. ; LaBel, Kenneth A. ; Schwank, James R. ; Dodds, Nathaniel A. ; Castaneda, Carlos M. ; Berg, Melanie D. ; Kim, Hak S. ; Phan, Anthony M. ; Seidleck, Christina M.

Author_Institution

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA

Volume

61

Issue

6

fYear

2014

fDate

Dec. 2014

Firstpage

2896

Lastpage

2903

Abstract

We report low-energy proton and low-energy alpha particle SEE data on a 32 nm SOI CMOS SRAM that demonstrates the criticality of using low-energy protons for SEE testing of highly-scaled technologies. Low-energy protons produced a significantly higher fraction of multi-bit upsets relative to single-bit upsets when compared to similar alpha particle data. This difference highlights the importance of performing hardness assurance testing with protons that include energy distribution components below 2 MeV. The importance of low-energy protons to system-level single-event performance is based on the technology under investigation as well as the target radiation environment.

Keywords

CMOS memory circuits; SRAM chips; alpha-particle effects; integrated circuit testing; proton effects; radiation hardening (electronics); silicon-on-insulator; SOI CMOS SRAM; hardness assurance testing; highly scaled technologies; low energy protons criticality; low-energy alpha particle effects; single event effects testing; size 32 nm; Alpha particles; Proton radiation effects; Radiation hardening (electronics); Random access memory; Silicon-on-insulator; Single event upsets; Alpha particle radiation effects; proton radiation effects; radiation hardness assurance testing; silicon-on-insulator technology; single-event upset;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9499

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TNS.2014.2369171

Filename

6971236