Impact of Ion Energy and Species on Single Event Effects Analysis

Sub-LET Threshold SEE Cross Section Dependency With Ion Energy

“…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.…”

“…These events, product of nuclear reactions, are experimentally visible in the so-called sub-Linear Energy Transfer (LET) threshold region, in which the primary ions have LET values too low to induce SEEs through direct ionization. In fact, as was predicted through calculations in [2], [3] and measured inorbit in [4], the contribution from heavy ion induced nuclear reactions can be dominant (by over two orders of magnitude) for an interplanetary environment and a radiation hardened component with respect to the traditional, direct ionization based prediction methods.…”

“…Brandenburg is with the University of Groningen, KVI-Center for Advance Radiation Technology (CART), Zernikelaan 25, interaction of the ions through matter based on the respective physical laws. However, the authors of [4] point out that, in the sub-LET threshold domain (in which indirect energy deposition events are responsible for SEEs), simulation tools provide less accurate results than in the above-threshold region. In particular, a very large discrepancy is reported for one SRAM and a 40 MeV/n 40 Ar ion in TAMU at Texas A&M [5], for which the simulated sub-LET threshold cross section value was roughly two orders of magnitude below the experimental result.…”

The Impact of Delta-Rays on Single-Event Upsets in Highly Scaled SOI SRAMs

“…In recent years, additional physical mechanisms have been required to explain SEU cross sections where LET alone has been insufficient [2], [17], [18], [19], [20]. A single ion that deposits energy in a sensitive volume may produce spatial and temporal charge distributions dramatically different than those produced by the average event as predicted by LET alone [14].…”

Impact of scaling on the soft error sensitivity of bulk, FDSOI and FinFET technologies due to atmospheric radiation

“…In the past ten years, multi-physics modeling based on Monte-Carlo simulations have been developed [13,[18][19][20][21][22] to overcome the obsolescence of engineering models at predicting SEE rates (SERs). These new methods are essential to evaluate the device sensitivity and to investigate evolving technologies and observe emerging SEE mechanisms.…”