SER/SEL performances of SRAMs in UTBB FDSOI28 and comparisons with PDSOI and BULK counterparts

Abstract

This work presents alpha and neutron SER characterizations of a 28nm commercial Fully-Depleted SOI technology predisposed to consumer applications. Its intrinsic SER hardness is as well compared to known highly reliable Partially-Depleted SOI technologies.

The Effect of Energy Loss Straggling on SEUs Induced by Low-Energy Protons in 28 nm FDSOI SRAMs

“…The minimum depositing energy E depo_min required to trigger SEUs could also be calculated by (1), which was 4.60 keV. It was considerably larger than the results shown in Table 3.…”

“…The possibility of nuclear reactions between low-energy protons and other atoms in devices is extremely low, therefore upsetting observed in experiments were actually caused by proton direct ionization. According to the method based on LET, energy deposited in sensitive volume referred to the 22 nm thick drain region can be calculated by (1) and the results are presented in Table 3. In Formula (1), P LET and ∆X represent the LET of proton in silicon and the trajectory length of an incident particle, respectively, whereas ρ Si is the density of silicon.…”

“…As an important type of space application integrated circuits, SRAM has attracted much attention about improving its irradiation resistance, in which single event upsets (SEUs) are the main issue referring to a storage state changed by one single ionizing particle striking a sensitive node. Silicon on insulator (SOI) technologies can effectively suppress short channel effect and have intrinsic hardness towards single event effects (SEEs) [1,2], therefore it may be a preferable choice compared with bulk technologies for sub-28 nm process nodes.…”

Alpha soft error rate of FDSOI 28 nm SRAMs: Experimental testing and simulation analysis

“…Assuming an alpha flux of 0.001 cph/cm 2 , all the bitcells under test were found to have an SER below 1 FIT/Mb, with typical values of a few 0.1 FIT/Mb. As a comparison, neutron testings on the same cells in [3] revealed SER values of a few FIT/Mb (bounded by 10 FIT/Mb), which is still very low for a CMOS technology. An exception is the "Single Port B" bitcell showing a discrepancy with respect to the other ones, as can be seen on the graph.…”

“…An Ultra-Thin Body and Buried oxide (UTBB) FDSOI technology has been developed in 28 nm at STMicroelectronics, aimed at maintaining the miniaturization of electronic circuits. In order to thoroughly qualify the radiation tolerance of the FD28 technology, extensive measurement campaigns have been carried out [3]. One notable feature that emerged is the very low sensitivity of the technology to alpha radiation, which is of particular interest considering the terrestrial Soft Error Rate (SER) is dominated by interaction with alpha particles and neutrons.…”