Investigation of single event effects of high energetic heavy ions

The authors started a research program using heavy ion beams to investigate radiation effects on microelectronic devices. In order to expose static random access memory (SRAM) devices to heavy ions a test system was installed. This setup was first operated using different ions at the GSI UNILAC with energies below 20 MeV/nucleon. After these first tests further measurements were performed with ions of different charge and energy up to 1 GeV/nucleon at the GSI-SIS. As ions with energies of some hundred MeV/nucleon are a good representation of space conditions such beams are interesting for reliability tests of microelectronic space equipment. The experimental setup and the exposure conditions at GSI are described and first results are presented