Investigation of 14 MeV Neutron Capabilities for SEU Hardness Evaluation

Evidence of the Robustness of a COTS Soft-Error Free SRAM to Neutron Radiation

“…In conclusion, SEUs in the A-LPSRAM due to alpha particles coming from thermal neutrons are unlikely, or even not possible. A fact supporting this assertion is the complete absence of single events during the 15-MeV neutron irradiation even though recoil ions show LET values up to 8 MeV/cm 2 /mg [19]. In addition, this analysis allows ruling out the occurrence of soft errors by alpha particles originating in radioactive impurities, such as the nuclei in the uranium and thorium decay chains, and some isotopes of platinum [23]- [25].…”

“…As it was previously said, 15-MeV neutrons in silicon only produce nuclear reaction yielding secondary ions with a LET below 8 MeV/cm 2 /mg [19]. However, high-energy neutrons in the atmosphere can produce recoil atoms with larger values of LET that can eventually lead to the occurrence of bit-flips.…”

“…Table I shows a review of the SEU cross-section found in the literature focusing on commercial SRAM devices ranging from 90 to 180 nm CMOS technologies. These results were mainly extracted from works by Baggio [16], Normand [17], Hands [18], and Miller [19]. For brevity, works are called Bag07, Nor10, Han11, and Mil13 in the Table I.…”

Evaluating the SEE Sensitivity of a 45 nm SOI Multi-Core Processor Due to 14 MeV Neutrons

“…In this case, the neutron energy is maximal at 15 MeV. Reference [15] discusses the relevance of using 14 MeV neutron test to characterize the SEU sensitivity of digital devices.…”

SEL Hardness Assurance in a Mixed Radiation Field

“…In fact, the generalized conclusion of a study carried out on a broad range of devices [6] (including SRAMs, FPGAs, microprocessors and SDRAMs) is that monoenergetic proton and neutron beams may be used for SEU testing as an alternative to a spallation neutron source provided results within a factor 2 are acceptable. In the case of neutrons, the test energy required to characterize a device's SEU sensitivity can be as low as 14 MeV [7].…”