Impact of a Laser Pulse on a STT-MRAM Bitcell: Security and Reliability Issues

2018 IEEE 24th International Symposium on On-Line Testing And Robust System Design (IOLTS) Pub Date : 2018-07-01 DOI:10.1109/IOLTS.2018.8474088

Mounia Kharbouche-Harrari, J. Postel-Pellerin, G. D. Pendina, R. Wacquez, Driss Aboulkassimi, M. Bocquet, R. Sousa, R. Delattre, J. Portal

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引用次数: 5

Abstract

The Spin Transfer Torque Magnetic Random Access Memory (STT-MRAM) has been identified, by the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), as one of the most promising emerging technology. Different works handled the retention and reliability of STT-MRAM. However, to the best of our knowledge, the impact of a pulsed laser beam on STT-MRAM reliability and security has not been investigated so far as proposed in this paper. Since STT-MRAM are Back-end Of Line devices, we exposed the bit cells from the front-side to a 1064 nm wavelength laser pulse. The devices are electrically characterized (switching conditions between the two logical states) before and after the laser irradiation. The main result of this study is the demonstration of a resistance switching from Anti-Parallel (AP) to Parallel (P) state after the laser irradiation. That is how data integrity was altered by this irradiation, flipping the bit stored in this memory.

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激光脉冲对STT-MRAM位元的影响:安全性和可靠性问题

自旋传递扭矩磁随机存取存储器(STT-MRAM)已被国际半导体技术路线图(ITRS)确定为最有前途的新兴技术之一。不同的工作处理STT-MRAM的保留和可靠性。然而，据我们所知，脉冲激光束对STT-MRAM可靠性和安全性的影响尚未像本文所提出的那样进行研究。由于STT-MRAM是后端线器件，我们将位单元从正面暴露在1064nm波长的激光脉冲下。器件在激光照射前后的电特性(两种逻辑状态之间的切换条件)。本研究的主要结果是证明了激光照射后电阻从反平行(AP)状态切换到平行(P)状态。这就是这种辐射如何改变数据完整性，翻转存储在内存中的比特。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

2018 IEEE 24th International Symposium on On-Line Testing And Robust System Design (IOLTS)

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