Total ionizing dose and single event effects of 1 Mb HfO2-based resistive-random-access memory

Abstract

Experiments of total ionizing dose (TID) using a Cobalt-60 source and single event effects (SEE) using pulsed laser and heavy ion were conducted to investigate the radiation effects in 1 Mb HfO2-based resistive-random-access memory (RRAM) with 1T1R (1 access transistor in series with 1 RRAM) storage cell structure. TID-induced leakage current in the access transistors on the same bit-lines caused a read decision failure and the bit errors observed. The failure threshold for the leakage current of access transistor was about 3.4 nA by HSpice simulation, which was also verified by the transfer characteristics of the access N-type Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (NMOS) transistor in 1T1R cell before and after radiation. The RRAM array was immune to single event upsets (SEU) regardless of the pulsed laser and heavy ion used. The single event latchup (SEL) in row decoder circuits was found to trigger burst of errors, whose physical mapping was analyzed. These analyses and finds are useful for developing radiation-hard RRAM aimed at space applications.