Single event upset cross section and total ionizing dose in simple commercial-off-the-shelf microelectronic devices using advanced proton, X-ray, and gamma radiation sources

Abstract This paper presents the results for single event upset (SEU) cross section and total ionizing dose (TID) in simple commercial-off-the-shelf microelectronic devices (SRAM, FLASH, Logic CMOS, and RTC). The die of a decapsulated or thinned chip was precisely irradiated using either the rapid-scanning 9 MeV proton microbeam (10 8 –10 9 particles/(cm 2 s)) or the 45 keV X-ray microbeam (10 11 –10 12 photons/(cm 2 s)). For comparison, samples have been irradiated with gamma rays from a standard Co-60 radioactive source. SEUs were observed only in the proton irradiated 65 nm SRAM devices. The SEU cross section varied in the range of (0.39–2.73) × 10 –14 cm 2 /bit. The average SEU cross section determined for devices tested with 9 MeV protons was (1.5 ± 0.9) × 10 –14 cm 2 /bit. The average TID for SRAM samples irradiated with protons was 1.9 ± 1.0 kGy. The average TID obtained for gamma irradiation was 2.4 ± 0.1 kGy, while for X-ray irradiation was 1.4 ± 0.2 kGy. In contrast to the SRAM devices, no SEUs were observed in proton irradiated FLASH devices. The average TID for the gamma/proton/X-ray irradiation were for FLASH 1.97/1.77/0.96 kGy, for RTC 0.68/0.52/0.13 kGy; and for Logic CMOS 0.84/0.19/0.37 kGy, respectively.