Analysis of soft error rate caused by secondary cosmic-ray neutrons in the building

Abe, Shinichiro   

Whereas the number of microelectronics supporting social infrastructure goes on increasing year after year, soft errors lead serious disasters. Most microelectronic devices are put in a building, thus it is necessary to consider the shielding effect of building materials on the validation of soft errors. In this study, the location dependence of soft error rate (SER) in the five-story building was investigated by PHITS simulation. It was found that the minimum SER is obtained on the first floor while the minimum neutron flux is obtained on the second floor. This result indicates that microelectronic devices should be put as near as possible to the first floor.