Frequency Dependence of Alpha-Particle Induced Soft Error Rates of Flip-Flops in 40-nm CMOS Technology

Author

Jagannathan, S. ; Loveless, T.D. ; Bhuva, B.L. ; Gaspard, N.J. ; Mahatme, N. ; Assis, T. ; Wen, S.-J. ; Wong, R. ; Massengill, L.W.

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng. & Comput. Sci., Vanderbilt Univ., Nashville, TN, USA

Volume

59

Issue

6

fYear

2012

Firstpage

2796

Lastpage

2802

Abstract

In this paper, the alpha-particle induced soft error rate of two flip-flops are investigated as a function of operating frequency between 80 MHz and 1.2 GHz. The two flip-flops-an unhardened D flip-flop and a hardened pseudo-DICE flip-flop were designed in a TSMC 40 nm bulk CMOS technology. The error rates of both flip-flops increase with frequency. Analyses show that an internal single-event transient based upset mechanism is responsible for the frequency dependence of the error rates.

Keywords

CMOS integrated circuits; alpha-particle effects; flip-flops; radiation hardening (electronics); TSMC bulk CMOS technology; alpha-particle induced soft error rates; frequency 80 MHz to 1.2 GHz; frequency dependence; hardened pseudo-DICE flip-flop; internal single-event transient; unhardened D flip-flop; upset mechanism; Alpha particles; Flip-flops; Latches; Master-slave; Radiation hardening; Single event upset; Topology; Transient analysis; Alpha-particles; RHBD; charge sharing; frequency effects; hardened flip-flops; radiation-hardened-by-design; single-event effects; single-event transient (SET); single-event upset (SEU); soft error rates (SER); soft error upset;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9499

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TNS.2012.2223827

Filename

6361437