Proton Direct Ionization in Sub-Micron Technologies: Numerical Method for RPP Parameter Extraction

Abstract

This work introduces a numerical method to iteratively extract parameters of a rectangular parallelepiped (RPP) sensitive volume (SV) from experimental proton direct ionization SEU data. The method combines two separate numerical models. The first model estimates the average LET values for energetic ions, including protons and also heavy ions, in elemental solid targets. The second model describes the statistical variance in the energy deposition events of projectile-induced primary ionization within a RPP shaped target volume. To benchmark the method, simulated cross-section values based on RPP parameters derived with this method are compared with literature data from four SRAM devices. The RPP geometries determined by this method reproduced the experimental crosssection values in the literature with good accuracy, therefore showing that this method can be used to reliably and quickly determine the RPP parameters for SVs in memories sensitive to proton direct ionization (PDI). The method is currently strictly limited to direct ionization effects, i.e. not taking into account any nuclear reaction mechanisms, and elemental materials due to the underlying models' definitions.Index Terms-proton direct ionization (PDI), single event upset (SEU), linear energy transfer (LET), straggling, Monte Carlo (MC) method, rectangular parallelepiped (RPP)

Proton Direct Ionization in Sub-Micron Technologies: Test Methodologies and Modeling

“…3) SV Method (SVM): For this SER method, the method presented in [36] is used to estimate the PDI response curve based on PDI rectangular parallelepiped (RPP) sensitive volume (SV) parameters for both DUTs. The resulting function is referred to here as σ P DI,method (E).…”

“…The method in [36] essentially uses a function of proton energy E and the SV parameters: overlayer thickness h OL , SV thickness h SV , side length of the front square face of the SV a SV , the critical charge Q crit . The method estimates the cross-sections from a given set of PDI SV parameters following these four steps: 1.)…”

“…This geometry can be used as a surrogate in radiation transport calculations and the device can be investigated in various radiation environments without the need of further irradiation tests. A method to extract PDI SV parameters from experimental QME cross-sectional data was introduced in [36], which was benchmarked against MC simulations. In this work, the applicability of that method is shown to extend to extract PDI SV parameters from DHEP data.…”

“…Investigate a method to extract PDI sensitive volume (SV) parameters from the DHEP test data. The second goal of this study is based on the method to extract PDI SV parameters from QME data presented in [36]. In this work, the method is shown to extract PDI SV parameters from DHEP data as well.…”

“…In this work, the method is shown to extract PDI SV parameters from DHEP data as well. As in the previous work [36], the method extracts parameters for a single SV, or also referred to as the PDI SV or PDI RPP geometry in this work.…”