A Complementary Survey of Radiation-Induced Soft Error Research: Facilities, Particles, Devices and Trends

Soft errors caused by external radiation sources have historically affected the reliability of electronic devices. The radiation effects community has dedicated significant effort to understanding and addressing circuit failures, offering insights and techniques for their mitigation. Nevertheless, the broad nature of the radiation field research poses challenges to identifying the overall progress made by its community. This survey analyses a collection of 295 articles published between 2018 and 2022, with the aim to characterize the current stage of radiation-induced errors research. The focus is on experimental research considering radiation effects on electronic devices, excluding from consideration works that solely involve simulation and radiation modeling. Furthermore, it limits the analysis scope to effects of particle radiation originating from space, overlooking device- or material-related radiation sources such as those due to specific chip packaging or used solder bumps. The survey contributes to the characterization of particles, facilities, and devices used in current radiation-induced experiments, bringing both quantitative and qualitative analyses of the literature over the past five years. Lastly, this review reports trends in radiation research, revealing which particles are currently considered most relevant, highlighting the most used facilities available for testing radiation effects, and emphasizing which technological nodes and/or devices are addressed preferentially with regard to radiation-induced effects studies.