Mechanism of single-event transient pulse quenching between dummy gate isolated logic nodes**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61376109) and the Opening Project of National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Reliability Physics and Application Technology of Electrical Component, China (Grant No. ZHD201202).

Abstract

As integrated circuits scale down in size, a single high-energy ion strike often affects multiple adjacent logic nodes. The so-called single-event transient (SET) pulse quenching induced by single-event charge sharing collection has been widely studied. In this paper, SET pulse quenching enhancement is found in dummy gate isolated adjacent logic nodes compared with that isolated by the common shallow trench isolation (STI). The physical mechanism is studied in depth and this isolation technique is explored for SET mitigation in combinational standard cells. Three-dimensional (3D) technology computer-aided design simulation (TCAD) results show that this technique can achieve efficient SET mitigation.