Heavy ion induced upset errors in 90-nm 64 Mb NOR-type floating-gate Flash memory

Abstract

Upset errors in 90-nm 64 Mb NOR-type floating-gate Flash memory induced by accelerated 129 Xe and 209 Bi ions are investigated in detail. The linear energy transfer covers the range from 50 to 99.8 MeV/(mg/cm 2 ). When the memory chips are powered off during heavy ions irradiation, single-event-latch-up and single-event-function-interruption are excluded, and only 0->1 upset errors in the memory array are observed. These error bit rates seem very difficult to achieve and cannot be simply recovered based on the power cycle. The number of error bits shows a strong dependence on the linear energy transfer (LET). Under room-temperature annealing conditions, the upset errors can be reduced by about two orders of magnitude using rewrite/reprogram operations, but they subsequently increase once again in a few minutes after the power cycle. High-temperature annealing can diminish almost all error bits, which are affected by the lower LET 129 Xe ions. The percolation path between the floating-gate (FG) and the substrate contributes to the radiation-induced leakage current, and has been identified as the root cause of the upset errors of the Flash memory array in this work.

Radiation Immune-Planar Two-Terminal Nanoscale Air Channel Devices toward Space Applications

“…The SEEs in the outer space are predominantly caused by heavy ion radiation, but the complex electromagnetic environment exists in the accelerator, which makes it difficult to directly and precisely detect the sample performance changes induced by heavy ion radiation in the ground simulation experiments . Alternatively, the pulse laser can induce comparable SEEs in devices via the photoelectric effect, which offers the benefits of accurately locating the SEE sensitive parts of samples and measuring the dynamic response characteristics of SEEs.…”

“…The SEEs in the outer space are predominantly caused by heavy ion radiation, but the complex electromagnetic environment exists in the accelerator, which makes it difficult to directly and precisely detect the sample performance changes induced by heavy ion radiation in the ground simulation experiments. 23 Alternatively, the pulse laser can induce comparable SEEs in devices via the photoelectric effect, which offers the benefits of accurately locating the SEE sensitive parts of samples and measuring the dynamic response characteristics of SEEs. Moreover, the incident energy of the pulse laser is continuous, adjustable, and corresponds to the equivalent linear energy transfer (LET) value range of heavy ions, which enables the pulse laser to be an effective tool to simulate the SEE experiments on the ground.…”

Total ionizing dose effects on graphene-based charge-trapping memory

“…To build a conductive path multiple EADs working together is needed. This multiple-trap assisted tunneling (m-TAT) mechanism [33,34] is illustrated in Figure 6.…”

Investigation of single event effect in 28-nm system-on-chip with multi patterns*

“…The state-of-the-art multi-processor system-on-chip (SoC) is attractive to aerospace applications, thanks to its high performance and low power consumption. [1,2] Nevertheless, the harsh environment in space forces it to overcome some challenges, [3][4][5] such as single event effect (SEE) including single event upset (SEU), single event functional interruption (SEFI), single event transient (SET), single event latch-up (SEL), and others. [6][7][8] Currently, the scaled semiconductor manufacture technology makes SEE more serious.…”