The Influence of Ion Track Characteristics on Single-Event Upsets and Multiple-Cell Upsets in Nanometer SRAM

The influence of ion track characteristics on single-event upsets (SEU) and multiple-cell upsets (MCUs) is investigated in 65-nm static randon access memory (SRAM) above the heavy-ion linear energy transfer (LET) threshold. The experimental results show that for the incident heavy ions with the same or similar LET but different energies, SEU cross section of low-energy ions is higher than high-energy ions when the LET values are located below the knee point of low-energy SEU event cross section curves. With the LET values increasing above the knee point, SEU cross section of high-energy ions is higher than low-energy ions. When the effective LETs of different-energy ions within the sensitive region are the same, MCU mean, MCU ratio, and MCU event cross sections of high-energy ions are greater than those of low-energy ions due to larger track radius. During the test evaluation of heavy-ion single-event effect (SEE) in nanometer devices, it may be advisable that the SEU LET threshold be obtained with low-energy ions and the SEU saturation cross section be obtained with high-energy ions.