Comparative study of MC-50 and ANITA neutron beams by using 55 nm SRAM

Single event upset (SEU) is mainly caused by neutrons in the terrestrial environment. In addition, SEU effects become more and more problematic as technology scales. It is, therefore, important to understand the SEU behaviors of semiconductor devices under neutron reactions. ANITA (atmospheric-like neutrons from thick target) in TSL (The Svedberg Laboratory), Sweden, resembles the neutron energy and flux spectrum to neutrons at the terrestrial level and are typically used to estimate the soft error rate (SER). On the other hand, the neutron energy and flux spectrum from the MC-50 cyclotron at KIRAMS (Korea Institute of Radiological & Medical Sciences) differs greatly from the atmospheric environment. The main objective of this work is finding the efficacy of the neutron beam at KIRAMS for a SEU analysis by using a comparative analysis; 55 nm SRAM is used to determine SEU difference under the beams at two different locations. Since MCU (multi-cell upset) is the dominant effect in emerging technologies with smaller critical charges, the MCU cross sections from the two different beam tests are compared.This work was supported in part by Samsung Electronics. The experiment at TSL was in part supported by Cisco Systems, Inc. We greatly appreciate the help given by Dr. ShiJie Wen and Richard Wong at Cisco Systems, Inc., to perform the SEU test at TSL