Fault-based reliable design-on-upper-bound of electronic systems for terrestrial radiation including muons, electrons, protons and low energy neutrons

Abstract

In-depth study on environmental radiation spectra of neutrons, protons, muons, electrons, gamma rays are carried out. Soft-error rates in 130nm SRAMs are estimated based on the survey results with the following conclusions: (1) Charge deposition by muons is relatively high when the muons penetrate p-wells in SRAMs, suggesting current devices have been already affected if the critical charge is below 1fC. (2) Electrons and gamma rays may have certain impacts when the critical charge reduces as low as 0.05fC, suggesting CMOS devices will be safe for at least near future against soft error by electrons and gamma rays. (3) Soft error rates due to both muons and electrons drastically increase as critical charge reduced below certain threshold values.