MBSA Approaches Applied to Next Decade Digital System-On-a-Chip Components

Neutron-induced soft errors in advanced Flash memories

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?

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.

Low Energy Protons at RADEF - Application to Advanced eSRAMs

A low energy proton facility has been developed at RADEF, Jyvskyl, Finland. The proton energy selection, calibration and dosimetry are described. The first experiment with external users was performed using two memory test vehicles fabricated with 28 nm technology. Examples of single event upset measurements in the test vehicles embedded SRAMs (eSRAMs) as a function of proton energy are provided.