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We report on the radiation response of a novel p-type photogate pixel. Sensors are exposed to gamma rays, and fusion neutrons during deuterium plasma operation at W–Tungsten–Environment in Steady-state Tokamak (WEST), showing dark current increase with total dose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on alpha and neutron irradiation of 7.8 $\boldsymbol {\mu }\text{m}$ single-photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) manufactured in 40-nm CMOS. Displacement damage leads to persistent dark count rate hot spots, due to carrier generation centers introduced by radiation. Defects are studied as a function of temperature and electrical stress, with live acquisitions evidencing large amounts of short-term annealing of the damage, and sometimes also random telegraph signal. Average damage factors and defect activation energies are consistent with a large field-enhancement of carrier generation. Since some radiation-induced defects lead to out-of-spec behavior, the implications for the reliability of SPAD-based systems are also discussed, by projecting the associated terrestrial failure rates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we present Tool suIte for rAdiation Reliability Assessment (TIARA), an industrial version of a Monte Carlo single-event simulation platform, enabling fast and accurate soft error rate (SER) estimations. This tool is capable of simulating logic cells manufactured in several technologies such as fully depleted silicon on insulator (FD-SOI), FinFET, and planar bulk CMOS. Moreover, TIARA is able to handle many different types of radiations including by-products of neutron or proton spallation, heavy ions and alpha particles, representative of terrestrial and space environments. Three use cases are shown in this article to illustrate TIARA capabilities. The first one compares the error rate in Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) orbit of all flip-flop variants from a 28-nm FD-SOI library. Second one evaluates multiple-cell upsets as a function of simulated array size for static random access memory (SRAM) cells manufactured in a 40-nm bulk technology. The last one shows alpha and neutron SER results for SRAM designed in a bulk-FinFET technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the first time die-to-die soft error rate (SER) variability from process manufacturing is experimentally characterized by irradiating a very large number of samples from a single wafer. Alpha and neutron SER is measured and reported as a function of original location on wafer, test dates and samples capacity. CAD tools are then used to evaluate their capacity to assess die-to-die alpha and neutron SER variability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work reports a long-duration (\sim 3~years) real-time underground experiment of 65 nm SRAM technology at the underground laboratory of Modane (LSM) to quantify the impact of alpha-emitter on the Soft-Error Rate (SER). We developed an original and full analytical charge deposition based on non constant Linear Energy Transfer (LET) to accurately model the diffusion/collection approach. Monte Carlo simulation results based on this improved model have been compared to experimental data to analyze the impact of alpha-particle production inside the circuit silicon material for both single and multiple chip upsets. Finally, the respective contributions of alpha emitters and atmospheric neutrons to the circuit Soft-Error Rate (SER) are evaluated and compared, considering additional real-time measurements performed in altitude on the ASTEP platform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Experimental neutron characterizations of standard and radiation-hardened-by-design (RHBD) flip-flops (FFs) are compared to combined GEANT4 and TIARA simulations. Good agreement is found between experiment and simulation for both architectures exhibiting soft error-rate (SER) values ranging over more than two decades. In-depth analysis of TIARA simulation results demonstrates that different underlying mechanisms are at the origin of observed soft errors: neutron-silicon (n-Si) elastic scattering for standard 65 nm FF while multiproduct nuclear reactions are for the RHBD structure. Finally, TIARA simulation results for monoenergetic neutron sources and atmospheric-like (i.e., synthetic) neutron spectra are discussed together with their impact on SER. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Atmospheric neutrons can interact with the matter inside a microelectronic chip and generate ionizing particles, which in turn can change the state of one or more memory bits [soft error (SE)]. In this letter, we show that SEs are possible in Flash memories, although with extremely low probabilities. While this problem will increase for future technologies, we do not expect SEs to be the reliability limiting factor for further Floating Gate scaling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]