Evaluation of total-ionizing-dose effects on reconfigurable field effect transistors and SRAM circuits

Abstract

For the first time, this paper presents a qualitative analysis of the total-ionizing-dose effects on reconfigurable field effect transistors (RFETs) and the corresponding static random-access memory (SRAM) circuits based on 3D technology computer aided design simulations. The effects of various electrical biases and geometric parameters are investigated in detail. For nand p-type programs, the threshold voltages (V TH ) respectively decrease by 83 mV and increase by 57 mV after 40 Mrad (Si) of irradiation. Radiation-induced oxide trap charges in the spacer region near the source side are shown to mainly dominate the performance degradation in RFETs. The control gate voltage (V CG ) and spacer length on the source side L S_Spacer are shown to have a significant influence on the total-ionizing-dose response, and a shorter L S_Spacer presents a stronger total-dose tolerance. When the RFETs in SRAMs suffer from a degraded V TH , the SRAM's read static noise margin declines by 51.3 mV after 40 Mrad (Si) of irradiation. This work provides a radiation hardening foundation for the application of RFET technology in future extreme-environment electronics applications.