0000000000142047
AUTHOR
S. Beltrami
showing 5 related works from this author
Key Contributions to the Cross Section of NAND Flash Memories Irradiated With Heavy Ions
2008
Heavy-ion irradiation of NAND flash memories under operating conditions leads to errors with complex, data-dependent signatures. We present upsets due to hits in the floating gate array and in the peripheral circuitry, discussing their peculiarities in terms of pattern dependence and annealing. We also illustrate single event functional interruptions, which lead to errors during erase and program operations. To account for all the phenomena we observe during and after irradiation, we propose an ldquoeffective cross section,rdquo which takes into account the array and peripheral circuitry contributions to the SEU sensitivity, as well as the operating conditions.
Neutron-induced soft errors in advanced Flash memories
2008
Atmospheric neutrons are a known source of Soft Errors (SE), in static and dynamic CMOS memories. This paper shows for the first time that atmospheric neutrons are able to induce SE in Flash memories as well. Detailed experimental results provide an explanation linking the Floating Gate (FG) cell SE rate to the physics of the neutron-matter interaction. The neutron sensitivity is expected to increase with the number of bits per cell and the reduction of the feature size, but the SE issue is within the limit of current ECC capabilities and will remain so in the foreseeable future.
Can Atmospheric Neutrons Induce Soft Errors in NAND Floating Gate Memories?
2009
Atmospheric neutrons can interact with the matter inside a microelectronic chip and generate ionizing particles, which in turn can change the state of one or more memory bits [soft error (SE)]. In this letter, we show that SEs are possible in Flash memories, although with extremely low probabilities. While this problem will increase for future technologies, we do not expect SEs to be the reliability limiting factor for further floating gate scaling.
Effect of Ion Energy on Charge Loss From Floating Gate Memories
2008
Heavy ions typical of the space environment have energies which exceed by orders of magnitude those available at particle accelerators. In this paper we are irradiating state of the art floating gate memories by using both a medium energy (SIRAD) and a high energy (RADEF) facilities. The corruption of stored information decreases when increasing ion energy. The proposed model deals with the broader track found for higher energy ions. Implications for testing procedures and for reliability considerations are discussed.
Direct evidence of secondary recoiled nuclei from high energy protons
2008
The production of secondary recoiled particles from interactions between high energy protons and microelectronics devices was investigated. By using NAND Flash memories, we were able to directly obtain analog information on recoil characteristics. While our results qualitatively confirm the role of nuclear reactions, in particular of those with tungsten, a quantitative model based on Monte Carlo and device-level simulations cannot describe the observed results in terms of recoils from proton-W reactions. © 2006 IEEE.