Experimental study on neutron single event effects of commercial SRAMs based on CSNS

Abstract

The experiment of neutron single event effect was carried out at China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS) back-n on 13 kinds of commercial SRAM. The single event upset (SEU) cross section of each device was obtained, and multiple cell upsets (MCU) were extracted from the SEUs using a statistical method without layout information. The influences of the test pattern, feature size and device layout on the SEU cross section and MCU were studied. The results show that the test pattern has little influence on the SEU cross section of the devices, but has a great influence on the MCU ratio of some devices. The feature size has influence both on the SEU cross section and the MCU ratio of the devices. The influence on SEU cross section is not definite. The influence on the MCU ratio is definite. Both the ratio and the maximum size of the MCUs increase with the decrease of the feature size. The difference of layout has great influence both on the SEU cross section and the MCU ratio of the device. In addition, compared with the results of plateau irradiation, the ratio of MCU in CSNS back-n is less than that of plateau irradiation. There are two reasons for this difference. One is that the energy spectrum of CSNS back-n is softer than that of the atmospheric neutron. The other is the neutron beam at CSNS back-n is perpendicular to the device under test. Therefore, evaluating the atmospheric neutron SEE using CSNS back-n line may underestimate the MCU ratio of the device under test. The experimental data, analytical methods and results obtained in this paper are valuable for the researchers to carry out the atmospheric neutron SEE test and the evaluation of devices on atmospheric neutron SEE.