Study of the Sensitive Region of a MOS Transistor to the Effects of Secondary Particles Arising from Ionizing Radiation

Abstract

It was shown in [1, 2] that the dependence of the fault tolerance of a static RAM cell on the energy of secondary particles resulting from the action of a neutron flux does not take into account another signifi-cant factor—the part of the transistor in which these secondary particles are generated. In order to determine the area of the memory cell in which the impact of secondary particles can lead to a failure, the probability of a failure depending on the location of the occurrence of the secondary particle is studied. A method for ana-lyzing the accumulated charge is proposed for assessing the fault tolerance of a static random access memory cell depending on the place of occurrence of the secondary particle and the charge corresponding to the mar-gin of static noise immunity. The analysis is carried out based on the results of the instrumental-technological simulation of a single MOS transistor, which is part of a static RAM cell, and the integration of the obtained values of the current responses from the regions of the transistor.