Soft-Error Performance Evaluation on Emerging Low Power Devices

Abstract

Radiation-induced single-event upset (SEU) has become a key challenge for cloud computing. The proposed introduction of low bandgap materials (Ge, III-Vs) as channel replacement and steep switching devices for low-voltage applications may induce radiation reliability issues due to their low ionization energy and device architecture. In this paper, the soft-error generation and propagation in Si FinFET, III-V FinFET, and III-V Hetero-junction tunnel FET (HTFET) are investigated using device and circuit simulation. III-V FinFET shows enhanced charge collection compared with Si FinFET, whereas HTFET shows significant reduction of the bipolar gain effect and charge collection. Soft-error rate (SER) evaluation methodology has been proposed for these emerging devices based on the critical LET extraction. SRAM bit flip, electrical masking effect, and latching window masking effect have been analyzed with supply voltage scaling. The SER evaluation of SRAM and logic shows that HTFET-based circuits are promising for radiation resilient ultra-low power applications. III-V FinFET shows increased SER for SRAM for ${\rm V}_{\rm DD}$ range of 0.3–0.8 Vand reduced logic SER below 0.5 V compared with Si FinFET.