Design for reducing alpha-particle-induced soft errors in ECL logic circuitry

Describes the alpha-particle-induced soft errors in ECL logic circuitry. Soft-error ´hot´ testing has been performed using 2.5-, 1.7-, and 1.3- mu m ECL gate arrays exposed to ²⁴¹Am. Experimental results reveal that: (1) the soft errors in ECL logic circuitry are caused by two types of upsets, latch toggling and gate upsets in clock lines; (2) the soft error rate (SER) increases rapidly as feature size is scaled down; and (3) the SER increases rapidly as switching current is reduced. To overcome the degradation of soft-error tolerance, a soft-error hardened (SEH) circuit design technique employing a new driver configuration which prevents upsets of critical nodes from propagating to following gates is introduced. The SEH design has been implemented in the ECL gate arrays and verified to improve the SER by more than 10² times as compared with conventional circuits.