Predicting neutron induced soft error rates: Evaluation of accelerated ground based test methods

Abstract

In this work, heavy ion and energetic proton single event upset (SEU) cross sections are measured for a 4 Mbit CMOS, static random access memory (SRAM). Heavy ion upset cross sections were used to define a dosimetry model suitable for use in a Monte-Carlo, physics-based transport code, which is shown to be predictive for experimentally measured proton single event upset (SEU) cross sections. The simulator was used to quantify the difference between neutron and proton SEU cross sections and to evaluate the fidelity of currently established rate prediction methods. Simulations indicate that established test methods under-predict the FIT rate between 26- 35% for this technology.