Muon-induced soft errors in 16-nm NAND flash memories

Abstract

Flash memories based on the floating gate architecture are sensitive to ionizing radiation at sea level, including atmospheric neutrons and alpha particles. No data are available on the sensitivity of Flash memories to muons. These particles, although very lightly ionizing, are the most abundant at sea level and have been reported to cause upsets in advanced SRAMs through direct ionization. The purpose of this contribution is to present the first experimental investigation of single event upsets induced by muons in 16-nm NAND Flash memories, using accelerated tests. The experimental results are discussed in terms of threshold voltage shifts and raw bit errors and the threshold LET values are analyzed for advanced samples. We show that muon-induced upsets are indeed possible also in Flash memories, even though the error rate is very low and ECC can easily cope with it.