Impact of Single Event Upset on Voltage and Current Behaviors of CNTFET SRAM and a Comparison with CMOS SRAM

Abstract

Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) provide a better alternative of silicon when it comes to nanoscales. Thanks to the high stability and high performance of carbon nanotube, CNT-based FET (CNTFET) devices are gaining popularity of late. They provide high packaging densities. Not much study had been done to analyze the characteristics of CNTFET SRAM in the presence of single event upset (SEU). The aim of this paper is to analyze the way in which SEU brings alterations in CNTFET SRAM characteristics and perform its comparison with respect to CMOS 6T SRAM. This paper analyzes the impact of SEU on voltage and current characteristics in CNTFET-based SRAM cell during three different conditions —read, write and hold modes. In the analysis, CNTFET SRAM showed that even small amount of radiations can cause flipping in cells and special circuitries are required to detect and correct the errors for SEU affected SRAM.