Direct evidence of secondary recoiled nuclei from high energy protons

The production of secondary recoiled particles from interactions between high energy protons and microelectronics devices was investigated. By using NAND Flash memories, we were able to directly obtain analog information on recoil characteristics. While our results qualitatively confirm the role of nuclear reactions, in particular of those with tungsten, a quantitative model based on Monte Carlo and device-level simulations cannot describe the observed results in terms of recoils from proton-W reactions. Index Terms--Floating gate memories, high energy protons, single event effects, space radiation.