Evaluation of total-ionizing-dose effects on reconfigurable field effect transistors and SRAM circuits

Abstract

For the first time, this paper presents a qualitative analysis of the total-ionizing-dose effects on reconfigurable field effect transistors (RFETs) and the corresponding static random-access memory (SRAM) circuits based on 3D technology computer aided design simulations. The effects of various electrical biases and geometric parameters are investigated in detail. For n- and p-type programs, the threshold voltages (V TH) respectively decrease by 83 mV and increase by 57 mV after 40 Mrad (Si) of irradiation. Radiation-induced oxide trap charges in the spacer region near the source side are shown to mainly dominate the performance degradation in RFETs. The control gate voltage (V CG) and spacer length on the source side L S_Spacer are shown to have a significant influence on the total-ionizing-dose response, and a shorter L S_Spacer presents a stronger total-dose tolerance. When the RFETs in SRAMs suffer from a degraded V TH, the SRAM’s read static noise margin declines by 51.3 mV after 40 Mrad (Si) of irradiation. This work provides a radiation hardening foundation for the application of RFET technology in future extreme-environment electronics applications.