Single Event Effects from Ions Produced in Nuclear Reactions of CMOS with Cosmic Rays

Single Event Effects (SEEs), disruptions in a microelectronic device caused by the passage of an energetic particle through the sensitive region of the device, are an increasing problem with advances in technologies. Three technology trends are responsible for the increased number of SEEs over the last decade. First, with the reduction of the operating voltages, devices have are susceptible to smaller amounts of radiations. Secondly, the data densities (bits per device) increased dramatically to meet the demand for more memory and faster processing time. Thirdly, commercial electronics firms have lowered the priority of radiation hardness in order to reduce manufacturing costs. Memory cells have received more attention than those in latches and combinatorial logic simply because there are more memory cells than the other types of cells. However, with the continued trends in technology, analyses by Shivakumar et. al. demonstrated that by 2011 SEEs of combinatorial logic will become comparable to that of unprotected memory elements.