Single event upset characteristics and physical mechanism for nanometric SOI SRAM induced by space energetic ions

Abstract

Based on Monte-Carlo method, the characteristics and physical mechanisms for deposited-energy spectra in sensitive volume (SV), single event upset cross sections, and on-orbit error rates in 65-32 nm silicon-on-insulator static random access memory (SOI SRAM) devices induced by space energetic ions are investigated. Space ions on geostationary earth orbit exhibit a flux peak at an energy point of about 200 MeV/n. In consequence, the single event response of nanometric SOI SRAMs under 200 MeV/n heavy ions is studied in detail. The results show that 200 MeV/n space ions exhibit the large straggling of deposited-energy in the device SV with thickness ranging from 60 nm to 40 nm, which causes the single event upsets to occur in the sub-LETmth region. The device SV can only partially collect the electron-hole pairs in the single ion track with a wide distribution of secondary electrons. As a result, the maximum and average deposited-energy in the SV decrease by 25% and 33.3%, respectively. Further, the single event upset probability decreases and the on-orbit error rate decreases by about 80%. With the downscaling of feature size, the per-bit saturated cross sections and on-orbit error rates of nanometric SOI SRAM devices decrease dramatically. The phenomenon of constant-increasing single event upset cross section with higher ion linear energy transfer (LET) is not observed, owing to the fact that (a) the density of electron-hole pairs in the track of 200 MeV/n space ion is relatively low and (b) the SOI device has thin sensitive volume, which results in the fact that the secondary-electron effect cannot upset nearby sensitive cells. Besides, it is found that the direct-ionization process of trapped protons leads to an increase of on-orbit error rate of 65 nm SOI SRAM by one to two orders of magnitude.