Total Ionizing Dose Influence on the Single-Event Upset Sensitivity of 130-nm PD SOI SRAMs

• Published in: IEEE transactions on nuclear science Vol. 64; no. 7; pp. 1897 - 1904
• Main Authors: Zheng, Qiwen, Cui, Jiangwei, Liu, Mengxin, Zhou, Hang, Liu, Mohan, Wei, Ying, Su, Dandan, Ma, Teng, Lu, Wu, Yu, Xuefeng, Guo, Qi, He, Chengfa
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York IEEE 01-07-2017; The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Inc. (IEEE)
• Subjects: Cross-sections; Irradiation; Noise measurement; Radiation; Radiation effects; Random access memory; Semiconductor devices; Sensitivity; Silicon; Silicon-on-insulator (SOI); Single event upsets; single-event upset (SEU); SOI (semiconductors); static random access memories (SRAM); Static random access memory; Synergistic effect; total ionizing dose (TID); Transistors
• ISSN: 0018-9499; 1558-1578
• DOI: 10.1109/TNS.2017.2706287

Effect of total ionizing dose (TID) on single-event upset (SEU) hardness of 130 nm partially depleted (PD) silicon-on-insulator (SOI) static random access memories (SRAMs) is investigated in this paper. The measurable synergistic effect of TID on SEU sensitivity of 130-nm PD SOI SRAM was observed in our experiment, even though that is far less than micrometer and submicrometer devices. Moreover, SEU cross section after TID irradiation has no dependence on the data pattern that was applied during TID exposure: SEU cross sections are characterized by TID data pattern and its complement data pattern are decreased consistently rather than a preferred state and a nonpreferred state as micrometer and sub-micrometer SRAMs. The memory cell test structure allowing direct measurement of static noise margin (SNM) under standby operation was designed using identical memory cell layout of SRAM. Direct measurement of the memory cell SNM shows that both data sides' SNM is decreased by TID, indicating that SEU cross section of 130-nm PD SOI SRAM will be increased by TID. And, the decreased SNM is caused by threshold shift in memory cell transistors induced by "radiation-induced narrow channel effect".