Design of a soft error resilient 13T SRAM architecture for radiation-prone environments in FinFET 18 nm technology

Abstract

As SRAM cells are scaled down to advanced technology nodes, their sensitivity to radiation-induced soft errors increases significantly, making them less reliable for use in critical environments like aerospace and defense. To address this issue, a new 13-transistor radiation-hardened SRAM cell, called SEFCR-13T, is proposed using 18 nm FinFET technology. The cell uses a feedback-cutting technique and redundant node structure to improve soft-error tolerance while maintaining a balance among power, speed, and area. The SEFCR-13T cell is designed and simulated using Cadence Virtuoso and compared with five existing SRAM cells: Conventional 6T, Hybrid 12T, TRD 9T, RHIRS 12T, and RRS 14T. Key performance parameters such as critical charge, static noise margins (SNM), power consumption, delay, and area were evaluated across a voltage range of 0.6 V–1.0 V. At 0.7 V, the proposed SEFCR 13T shows the highest critical charge of 3.67 fC, which is 2.65 × higher than the 6T SRAM and 1.2 × higher than RHIRS 12T. It also achieves a write SNM improvement of up to 2.95 × and read SNM improvement of 2.67 × compared to the 6T cell. Read and write delays are reduced by 2.5 × and 1.8 × , respectively, while read power is reduced by 2.4 × . The proposed design also achieves the highest overall figure of merit (FOM), 17 × better than 6T SRAM. These results show that the proposed cell provides excellent improvement in soft-error resistance and overall stability, making it a strong candidate for reliable memory design in radiation-prone and low-power applications.