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$3 \times 10^{13}/\text{cm}^{2}$ 1.2-MeV proton radiation will significantly increase heavy ion single-event transient (SET) cross sections and pulsewidths in 65-nm bulk CMOS technology. After proton radiation, heavy ion SET sensitivity increase in N-hit blocks is more than that in P-hit blocks. The analysis suggests that pMOS transistor on current ($I_{\mathrm{\scriptscriptstyle ON}}$) reduction due to total ionizing dose effects is the main reason for this effect. It is suggested that alternate heavy ion and proton experiments should be performed for radiation hardness assurance of candidate electronic devices used in deep space missions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The charge deposition of particles in materials is the primary stage in inducing ionization radiation effects. We analyzed charge depositions of heavy ion, proton, and neutron in digital integrated circuit (IC) materials [i.e., C(diamond), Si, Ge, and GaAs] and power IC materials [i.e., C(diamond), Si, SiC, and GaN] in this paper. For proton and heavy ion direct ionizations, the maximum deposited charge per unit length [i.e., (dQ/dx)max] was extracted for comparisons among these materials. For proton and neutron indirect ionizations, the maximum recoil-deposited charge (i.e., Qdepmax) and the recoil numbers were used for comparisons. The deposited charge by the low-energy recoils was modeled by the ionization efficiencies which were obtained from transport of ions in matter Monte Carlo simulations. The influences of temperature and doping concentration were also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Heavy-ion experiments demonstrated that reducing the distance between nMOS transistor and n-well can reduce N-hit (i.e., hit nMOS transistor) single-event transient (SET) pulsewidth. This principle can be applied for radiation-harden-by-design standard cell design without any area overhead. TCAD simulations indicated that the guard drain effect of the n-well and the enhanced restore current of pMOS transistor are responsible for the N-hit SET pulsewidth reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Low-energy (<10 MeV) proton-induced single event upsets (SEUs) were investigated through proton and heavy ion experiments on a 65 nm CMOS bulk SRAM. It is unlikely that 2-10 MeV proton direct ionization can induce SEUs in the 65 nm SRAM and the observed single-bit upsets (SBUs) and multiple cell upsets (MCUs) are mainly induced by the ionization from the recoil ions. The MCUs induced by low-energy protons in our 65 nm SRAM can be corrected by the error correction codes (ECC) because they usually occur along the SRAM bit line. The Geant4 simulations revealed that the SEU cross-section may show two different trends for 2-10 MeV protons depending on the critical charge for triggering a SEU. With the increase of proton energy, SEUs in small critical charge SRAM tend to decrease while SEUs in large critical charge SRAM tend to increase. Further, the Geant4 simulations demonstrated that the SEUs induced by recoil oxygen are more than those induced by recoil silicon and SEUs induced by recoil ions from elastic collisions dominate in our 65 nm CMOS SRAM under 2-10 MeV proton radiation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

With technology scaling down, scale of the integrated circuit (IC) increases rapidly. It is unrealistic to harden every element in the IC, hence it is critical to evaluate relative single-event transient (SET) or single-event upset (SEU) sensitivity of each node in the IC to selectively harden the elements connected to the identified highly sensitive nodes. Therefore, this paper proposes a test circuit to measure the relative SET/SEU sensitivity of each node in any circuit working in real time. This will have significant implications for designing ICs with high reliability and low overheads. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, five different cell placement structures of a vertical inverter chain were designed in a commercial bulk FinFET technology to investigate the effect of cell placement on a single-event transient (SET) pulse. 3-D TCAD mixed-mode simulation indicated that the cell placement has a significant effect on SET pulsewidths. Heavy-ion experiments at Cyclotron in the China Institute of Modern Physics in Lanzhou also indicated that the effect of cell placement on the SET pulse is obvious. The experiment also indicated that the effect of cell placement on P-hit SET is larger than that on N-hit SET, and charge sharing in vertical was becoming as important as that in horizontal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]