Proton Direct Ionization Upsets at Tens of MeV

Experimental monoenergetic proton single-event upset (SEU) cross sections of a 65-nm low core-voltage static random access memory (SRAM) were found to be exceptionally high not only at low energies ($ 3 MeV and extending up to tens of MeV. The SEU cross Section from 20-MeV protons exceeds the 200-MeV proton SEU cross Section by almost a factor of 3. Similarly, monoenergetic neutron cross sections at 14 MeV are about a factor of 3 lower than the 20-MeV proton cross section. Because of Monte Carlo (MC) simulations, it was determined that this strong enhancement is due to the proton direct ionization process as opposed to the elastic and inelastic scattering processes that dominate the SEU res…