Azimuthal dependence of single-event and multiple-bit upsets in SRAM devices with anisotropic layout

Experimental evidence is presented showing obvious azimuthal dependence of single event upsets(SEU) and multiple-bit upset(MBU) patterns in radiation hardened by design(RHBD) and MBU-sensitive static random access memories(SRAMs), due to the anisotropic device layouts. Depending on the test devices, a discrepancy from 24.5% to 50% in the SEU cross sections of dual interlock cell(DICE) SRAMs is shown between two perpendicular ion azimuths under the same tilt angle. Significant angular dependence of the SEU data in this kind of design is also observed, which does not fit the inverse-cosine law in the effective LET method. Ion trajectory-oriented MBU patterns are identified, which is also affected by the topological distribution of sensitive volumes. Due to that the sensitive volumes are periodically isolated by the BL/BLB contacts along the Y-axis direction, double-bit upsets along the X-axis become the predominant configuration under normal incidence.Predominant triple-bit upset and quadruple-bit upset patterns are the same under different ion azimuths(Lshaped and square-shaped configurations, respectively). Those results suggest that traditional RPP/IRPP model should be promoted to consider the azimuthal and angular dependence of single event effects in certain designs.During earth-based evaluation of SEE sensitivity, worst case beam direction, i.e., the worst case response, should be revealed to avoid underestimation of the on-orbit error rate.

OML:an online multi-particle locating method for high-resolution single-event effects studies

Identifying sensitive areas in integrated circuits susceptible to single-event effects(SEE)is crucial for improving radiation hardness.This study presents an online multi-track location(OML)framework to enhance the high-resolution online trajectory detection for the Hi’Beam-SEE system,which aims to localize SEE-sensitive positions on the IC at the micrometer scale and in real time.We employed a reparameterization method to accelerate the inference speed,merging the branches of the backbone of the location in the deployment scenario.Additionally,we designed an irregular convolution kernel,an attention mechanism,and a fused loss function to improve the positioning accuracy.OML demonstrates exceptional realtime processing capabilities,achieving a positioning accuracy of 1.83μm in processing data generated by the Hi’Beam-SEE system at 163 frames per second per GPU.

Heavy ion energy influence on multiple-cell upsets in small sensitive volumes:from standard to high energies

The 28 nm process has a high cost-performance ratio and has gradually become the standard for the field of radiation-hardened devices.However,owing to the minimum physical gate length of only 35 nm,the physical area of a standard 6T SRAM unit is approximately 0.16μm^(2),resulting in a significant enhancement of multi-cell charge-sharing effects.Multiple-cell upsets(MCUs)have become the primary physical mechanism behind single-event upsets(SEUs)in advanced nanometer node devices.The range of ionization track effects increases with higher ion energies,and spacecraft in orbit primarily experience SEUs caused by high-energy ions.However,ground accelerator experiments have mainly obtained low-energy ion irradiation data.Therefore,the impact of ion energy on the SEU cross section,charge collection mechanisms,and MCU patterns and quantities in advanced nanometer devices remains unclear.In this study,based on the experimental platform of the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou,low-and high-energy heavy-ion beams were used to study the SEUs of 28 nm SRAM devices.The influence of ion energy on the charge collection processes of small-sensitive-volume devices,MCU patterns,and upset cross sections was obtained,and the applicable range of the inverse cosine law was clarified.The findings of this study are an important guide for the accurate evaluation of SEUs in advanced nanometer devices and for the development of radiation-hardening techniques.

Pattern dependence in synergistic effects of total dose on single-event upset hardness

The pattern dependence in synergistic effects was studied in a 0.18 μm static random access memory（SRAM） circuit.Experiments were performed under two SEU test environments：3 Me V protons and heavy ions.Measured results show different trends.In heavy ion SEU test,the degradation in the peripheral circuitry also existed because the measured SEU cross section decreased regardless of the patterns written to the SRAM array.TCAD simulation was performed.TIDinduced degradation in n MOSFETs mainly induced the imprint effect in the SRAM cell,which is consistent with the measured results under the proton environment,but cannot explain the phenomena observed under heavy ion environment.A possible explanation could be the contribution from the radiation-induced GIDL in pMOSFETs.

Experimental study of temperature dependence of single-event upset in SRAMs

We report on the temperature dependence of single-event upsets in the 215–353 K range in a 4M commercial SRAM manufactured in a 0.15-lm CMOS process,utilizing thin film transistors. The experimental results show that temperature influences the SEU cross section on the rising portion of the cross-sectional curve(such as the chlorine ion incident). SEU cross section increases 257 %when the temperature increases from 215 to 353 K. One of the possible reasons for this is that it is due to the variation in upset voltage induced by changing temperature.

Investigation of maximum proton energy for qualified ground based evaluation of single-event effects in SRAM devices

Existing standards show a clear discrepancy in the specification of the maximum proton energy for qualified ground-based evaluation of single-event effects,which can range from 180 to 500 MeV. This work finds that the threshold linear energy transfer of a tested device is a critical parameter for determining the maximum proton energy. The inner mechanisms are further revealed. Highenergy deposition events(>10 MeV) in sensitive volumes are attributed to the interaction between protons and the tungsten vias in the metallization layers.

Single-event effects induced by medium-energy protons in 28 nm system-on-chip

Single-event effects(SEEs)induced by mediumenergy protons in a 28 nm system-on-chip(SoC)were investigated at the China Institute of Atomic Energy.An on-chip memory block was irradiated with 90 MeV and 70 MeV protons,respectively.Single-bit upset and multicell upset events were observed,and an uppermost number of nine upset cells were discovered in the 90 MeV proton irradiation test.The results indicate that the SEE sensitivities of the 28 nm SoC to the 90 MeV and 70 MeV protons were similar.Cosmic Ray Effects on Micro-Electronics Monte Carlo simulations were analyzed,and it demonstrates that protons can induce effects in a 28 nm SoC if their energies are greater than 1.4 MeV and that the lowest corresponding linear energy transfer was 0.142 MeV cm^2 mg^-1.The similarities and discrepancies of the SEEs induced by the 90 MeV and 70 MeV protons were analyzed.

Prototype of single-event effect localization system with CMOS pixel sensor

The single-event effect(SEE) is a serious threat to electronics in radiation environments. The most important issue in radiation-hardening studies is the localization of the sensitive region in electronics to the SEE. To solve this problem, a prototype based on a complementary metal oxide semiconductor(CMOS) pixel sensor, i.e., TopmetalM, was designed for SEE localization. A beam test was performed on the prototype at the radiation terminal of the Heavy Ion Research Facility in Lanzhou(HIRFL). The results indicated that the inherent deflection angle of the prototype to the beam was 1.7°, and the angular resolution was 0.6°. The prototype localized heavy ions with a position resolution of 3.4 μm.

Single-event-effect propagation investigation on nanoscale system on chip by applying heavy-ion microbeam and event tree analysis

The propagation of single-event effects(SEEs)on a Xilinx Zynq-7000 system on chip(SoC)was inves-tigated using heavy-ion microbeam radiation.The irradia-tion results reveal several functional blocks’sensitivity locations and cross sections,for instance,the arithmetic logic unit,register,D-cache,and peripheral,while irradi-ating the on-chip memory(OCM)region.Moreover,event tree analysis was executed based on the obtained microbeam irradiation results.This study quantitatively assesses the probabilities of SEE propagation from the OCM to other blocks in the SoC.

Analysis of single-event transient sensitivity in fully depleted silicon-on-insulator MOSFETs

Based on 3 D-TCAD simulations, single-event transient(SET) effects and charge collection mechanisms in fully depleted silicon-on-insulator(FDSOI) transistors are investigated. This work presents a comparison between28-nm technology and 0.2-lm technology to analyze the impact of strike location on SET sensitivity in FDSOI devices. Simulation results show that the most SET-sensitive region in FDSOI transistors is the drain region near the gate. An in-depth analysis shows that the bipolar amplification effect in FDSOI devices is dependent on the strike locations. In addition, when the drain contact is moved toward the drain direction, the most sensitive region drifts toward the drain and collects more charge. This provides theoretical guidance for SET hardening.

Catalytic Cracking of Cycloparaffins Admixed with Olefins:1. Single-Event Microkinetic(SEMK) Modeling

Single-event microkinetic(SEMK) model of the catalytic cracking of methylcyclohexane admixed with 1-octene over REUSY zeolites at 693 K—753 K in the absence of coke formation is enhanced. To keep consistency with the wellknown carbenium ion chemistry, hydride transfer forming and consuming allylic carbenium ions in the aromatization of cycloparaffins are further investigated and differentiated. The reversibility of endocyclic β-scission and cyclization reactions is refined by accounting explicitly for the reacting olefins and resulting cycloparaffins in the corresponding thermodynamics. 24 activation energies for the reactions involved in the cracking of cycloparaffins are obtained by the regression of 15 sets of experimental data upon taking the resulting 37 main cracking products, i. e., responses into account. The enhanced SEMK model can adequately describe the catalytic behavior of 37 main products with conversion and temperature.

Multiple bit upsets mitigation in memory by using improved hamming codes and parity codes

This paper combines improved Hamming codes and parity codes to assure the reliability of memory in presence of multiple bit upsets with low cost overhead.The redundancy bits of improved Hamming codes will be appended at the end of data bits,which eliminates the overhead of interspersing the redundancy bits at the encoder and decoder.The reliability of memory is further enhanced by the layout architecture of redundancy bits and data bits.The proposed scheme has been implemented in Verilog and synthesized using the Synopsys tools.The results reveal that the proposed method has about 19% less area penalties and 13% less power consumption comparing with the current two-dimensional error codes,and its latency of encoder and decoder is 63% less than that of Hamming codes.

Scaling effects of single-event gate rupture in thin oxides

The dynamics of the excess carriers generated by incident heavy ions are considered in both SiO2 and Si substrate. Influences of the initial radius of the charge track, surface potential decrease, external electric field, and the LET value of the incident ion on internal electric field buildup are analyzed separately. Considering the mechanisms of recombination, impact ionization, and bandgap tunneling, models are verified by using published experimental data. Moreover, the scaling effects of single-event gate rupture in thin gate oxides are studied, with the feature size of the MOS device down to 90 nm. The walue of the total electric field decreases rapidly along with the decrease of oxide thickness in the first period （1 2 nm to 3.3 nm）, and then increases a little when the gate oxide becomes thinner and thinner （3.3 nm to 1.8 nm）.

An online fast multi-track locating algorithm for high-resolution single-event effect test platform

To improve the efficiency and accuracy of single-event effect(SEE)research at the Heavy Ion Research Facility at Lanzhou,Hi’Beam-SEE must precisely localize the position at which each heavy ion hitting the integrated circuit(IC)causes SEE.In this study,we propose a fast multi-track location(FML)method based on deep learning to locate the position of each particle track with high speed and accuracy.FML can process a vast amount of data supplied by Hi’Beam-SEE online,revealing sensitive areas in real time.FML is a slot-based object-centric encoder-decoder structure in which each slot can learn the location information of each track in the image.To make the method more accurate for real data,we designed an algorithm to generate a simulated dataset with a distribution similar to that of the real data,which was then used to train the model.Extensive comparison experiments demonstrated that the FML method,which has the best performance on simulated datasets,has high accuracy on real datasets as well.In particular,FML can reach 238 fps and a standard error of 1.6237μm.This study discusses the design and performance of FML.

Catalytic Cracking of Cycloparaffins Admixed with Olefins:2. Single-Event Microkinetic(SEMK) Assessment

The developed SEMK model is used to provide an insight into the contribution of individual reactions in the cracking of methylcyclohexane as well as the site coverage by various carbenium ions. The preferred reaction pathways for the conversion of methylcyclohexane are hydride transfer reactions followed by PCP-isomerizations, deprotonation and endocyclic β-scission, accounting for 61%, 22% and 12% of its disappearance, respectively, at 693 K and 30% conversion of methylcyclohexane. Protolysis plays a minor role in the cracking of methylcyclohexane. Once cyclic diolefins are formed, all of them can be instantaneously transformed to aromatics, which are easily interconverted via disproportionation. Judging from the carbenium ion concentrations it is evident that, at the investigated operating conditions, less than 5% of the acid sites are covered by carbenium ions, less than 2% of which corresponds to cyclic type species including allylic ones.

Stability and performance analysis of a jump linear control system subject to digital upsets

This paper focuses on the methodology analysis for the stability and the corresponding tracking performance of a closed-loop digital jump linear control system with a stochastic switching signal. The method is applied to a flight control system. A distributed recoverable platform is implemented on the flight control system and subject to independent digital upsets. The upset processes are used to stimulate electromagnetic environments. Specifically, the paper presents the scenarios that the upset process is directly injected into the distributed flight control system, which is modeled by independent Markov upset processes and independent and identically distributed （IID） processes. A theoretical performance analysis and simulation modelling are both presented in detail for a more complete independent digital upset injection. The specific examples are proposed to verify the methodology of tracking performance analysis. The general analyses for different configurations are also proposed. Comparisons among different configurations are conducted to demonstrate the availability and the characteristics of the design.

Influences of supply voltage on single event upsets and multiple-cell upsets in nanometer SRAM across a wide linear energy transfer range

The influences of reducing the supply voltage on single event upset(SEU) and multiple-cell upset(MCU) in two kinds of 65-nm static random access memories(SRAMs) are characterized across a wide linear energy transfer(LET) range.The results show that the influence of the voltage variation on SEU cross section clearly depends on the LET value which is above heavy ion LET threshold no matter whether the SRAM is non-hardened 6 T SRAM or radiation-hardened double dual interlocked cells(DICE) SRAM.When the LET value is lower than the LET threshold of MCU,the SEU only manifests single cell upset,the SEU cross section increases with the decrease of voltage.The lower the LET value,the higher the SEU sensitivity to the voltage variation is.Lowering the voltage has no evident influence on SEU cross section while the LET value is above the LET threshold of MCU.Moreover,the reduction of the voltage can result in a decrease in the highest-order MCU event cross section due to the decrease of charge collection efficiency of the outer sub-sensitive volume within a certain voltage range.With further scaling the feature size of devices down,it is suggested that the dependence of SEU on voltage variation should be paid special attention to for heavy ions with very low LET or the other particles with very low energy for nanometer commercial off-the-shelf(COTS) SRAM.

Temperature dependence of single-event transients in SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistors for cryogenic applications

We experimentally demonstrate that the dominant mechanism of single-event transients in silicon-germanium heterojunction bipolar transistors(SiGe HBTs)can change with decreasing temperature from+20℃to-180℃.This is accomplished by using a new well-designed cryogenic experimental system suitable for a pulsed-laser platform.Firstly,when the temperature drops from+20℃to-140℃,the increased carrier mobility drives a slight increase in transient amplitude.However,as the temperature decreases further below-140℃,the carrier freeze-out brings about an inflection point,which means the transient amplitude will decrease at cryogenic temperatures.To better understand this result,we analytically calculate the ionization rates of various dopants at different temperatures based on Altermatt's new incomplete ionization model.The parasitic resistivities with temperature on the charge-collection pathway are extracted by a two-dimensional(2D)TCAD process simulation.In addition,we investigate the impact of temperature on the novel electron-injection process from emitter to base under different bias conditions.The increase of the emitter-base junction's barrier height at low temperatures could suppress this electron-injection phenomenon.We have also optimized the built-in voltage equations of a high current compact model(HICUM)by introducing the impact of incomplete ionization.The present results and methods could provide a new reference for effective evaluation of single-event effects in bipolar transistors and circuits at cryogenic temperatures,and could provide a new evidence of the potential of SiGe technology in applications in extreme cryogenic environments.

Impact of incident direction on neutron-induced single-bit and multiple-cell upsets in 14 nm FinFET and 65 nm planar SRAMs

Based on the BL09 terminal of China Spallation Neutron Source(CSNS),single event upset(SEU)cross sections of14 nm fin field-effect transistor(FinFET)and 65 nm quad data rate(QDR)static random-access memories(SRAMs)are obtained under different incident directions of neutrons:front,back and side.It is found that,for both technology nodes,the“worst direction”corresponds to the case that neutrons traverse package and metallization before reaching the sensitive volume.The SEU cross section under the worst direction is 1.7-4.7 times higher than those under other incident directions.While for multiple-cell upset(MCU)sensitivity,side incidence is the worst direction,with the highest MCU ratio.The largest MCU for the 14 nm FinFET SRAM involves 8 bits.Monte-Carlo simulations are further performed to reveal the characteristics of neutron induced secondary ions and understand the inner mechanisms.

Mechanism of single-event transient pulse quenching between dummy gate isolated logic nodes

As integrated circuits scale down in size, a single high-energy ion strike often affects multiple adjacent logic nodes.The so-called single-event transient（SET） pulse quenching induced by single-event charge sharing collection has been widely studied. In this paper, SET pulse quenching enhancement is found in dummy gate isolated adjacent logic nodes compared with that isolated by the common shallow trench isolation（STI）. The physical mechanism is studied in depth and this isolation technique is explored for SET mitigation in combinational standard cells. Three-dimensional（3D） technology computer-aided design simulation（TCAD） results show that this technique can achieve efficient SET mitigation.