Characterizing SEU cross sections of 12- and 28-nm SRAMs for 6.0, 8.0, and 14.8 MeV neutrons

Takami, Kazusa*; Gomi, Yuibi*; Abe, Shinichiro   ; Liao, W.*; Manabe, Seiya*; Matsumoto, Tetsuro*; Hashimoto, Masanori*

According to the test standard of JESD89, neutrons with energies higher than 10 meV are considered for calculating soft error rate (SER). However, neutrons whose energies are below 10 MeV exist in the terrestrial environment. This paper studies the characteristics of the single event upset (SEU) cross sections in 12- and 28-nm SRAMs induced by low-energy neutrons. Experimental results show that the SEU event cross sections of the 12-nm FinFET SRAM and 28-nm planar SRAM drop less significantly from 14.8 MeV to 6.0 MeV compared with 65-nm SRAM. This result shows that the importance of neutrons below 10 MeV elevates for terrestrial SER estimation for advanced SRAMs.