SEU Sensitivity of a 14-nm SOI FinFET eDRAM Cell under Heavy-ion Irradiation

Abstract

In this paper, we have evaluated the single event upset (SEU) sensitivity of an embedded-DRAM (eDRAM) in presence of heavy-ion irradiation using 3-D TCAD simulations. The eDRAM with an access time of $\sim 1$ ns is simulated using a calibrated 10.2 fF deep trench (DT) capacitor appended to a 14nm SOI-FinFET using mixed mode TCAD simulations. We have evaluated the impact of direction and position of the incident heavy-ion with linear energy transfer (LET) of 10 MeV-cm2/mg on the calibrated 14nm SOI-FinFET. The worst-case direction and position of heavy-ion are then used for evaluation of the SEU performance of eDRAM under heavy-ion irradiation. Our analysis is the first of its kind in analyzing the effect of heavy-ion irradiation on SEU sensitivity of eDRAM. We report that the critical LET for SEU to occur in the eDRAM is 500 MeV-cm2/mg which is 5 times better than the critical LET reported for SRAMs.