Impact of Heavy Ion Energy and Nuclear Interactions on Single-Event Upset and Latchup in Integrated Circuits

Abstract

The effects of heavy ion energy and nuclear interactions on the single-event upset (SEU) and single-event latchup (SEL) response of commercial and radiation-hardened CMOS ICs are explored. Above the threshold LET for direct ionization-induced upsets, little difference is observed in single-event upset and latchup cross sections measured using low versus high energy heavy ions. However, significant differences between lowand high-energy heavy ion test results are observed below the threshold LET for single-node direct ionization-induced upsets. The data suggest that secondary particles produced by nuclear interactions play a role in determining the SEU and SEL hardness of integrated circuits, especially at low LET. The role of nuclear interactions and implications for radiation hardness assurance and rate prediction are discussed.

Sub-LET Threshold SEE Cross Section Dependency With Ion Energy

“…As can be seen in Fig. 2, a significant cross section increase with energy is observed in the 10-30 MeV/n range for the Ne ion, in line with what was previously presented and discussed in [15]. It is worth noting that data in this interval includes an overlap between RADEF and UCL at around 10 MeV/n and TAMU and KVI at around 25 MeV/n.…”

“…8), the simulated results underestimate the experimental results by a factor ∼7 at 10 MeV/n and over a factor 400 at 30 MeV/n, and fail to reproduce the strong experimental cross section increase in this energy range. It is to be underlined that a similar dependency has been previously identified for other components [15] and that a comparable underestimation for the 40 MeV/n Ar ion point was shown in [4] for SRAM#3 at the TAMU facility. Several possible explanations as to why simulations are not able to reproduce the HI experimental data in this energy range are discussed in detail in the following sections.…”

“…The enhanced analysis will include components for which high-Z materials have shown to play an important role for proton-induced SEE cross sections [26], [36] and which are also expected to have a significant impact in the case of heavy ions in the sub-LET threshold region [2], [3], [15].…”

Compact Modeling and Simulation of Heavy Ion Induced Soft Error Rate in Space Environment: Principles and Validation

“…For example, the Monte Carlo techniques could provide the LET spectra of secondary products of nuclear reactions   SEC   , taking into account the average chemical composition of high-Z materials in the thick overlayers of modern ICs. Then, the contribution of nuclear reactions to SER in the circuits, that have a relatively high direct ionization threshold LET [30], could be calculated with equations similar to (11) and (12), based on the data for heavy ion direct ionization. This subject requires further investigations.…”

Radiation effects in superinsulators

“…Drugi cilj je pospešivanje rekombinacije elektrona i šupljina tokom njihove migracije kroz oksid (implantacijom atoma koji se ponašaju kao rekombinacioni centri u SiO 2 ) [75][76][77][78][79][80][81].…”