An automated approach to isolate dominant SER susceptibilities in microcircuits

Author

Castillo, James ; Mavis, David ; Eaton, Paul ; Sibley, Mike ; Elkins, Don ; Floyd, Rich

Author_Institution

Microelectron. Res. Dev. Corp., Albuquerque, NM, USA

fYear

2011

fDate

10-14 April 2011

Abstract

With the ever decreasing feature sizes of modern integrated circuits (IC), new test and analysis approaches are needed to isolate dominant soft error rate (SER) susceptibilities. A new test capability which provides SER raster scanning of microcircuits with a collimated heavy-ion beam, having spatial isolation as small as 10 microns, is presented. The system termed the Milli-Beam™ provides, through post processing, three-dimensional surface plots showing the location of error counts over an entire IC. A new cross section measurement technique that accounts for beam variations and uncertainties independent of laboratory dosimetry is also presented.

Keywords

error statistics; integrated circuit measurement; integrated circuit testing; radiation hardening (electronics); Milli-Beam; SER raster scanning; beam variation; collimated heavy-ion beam; cross section measurement; dominant SER susceptibility; error count; integrated circuit; laboratory dosimetry; microcircuit; soft error rate; spatial isolation; test capability; three-dimensional surface plot; Actuators; Apertures; Integrated circuits; Monitoring; Particle beams; Random access memory; Software; Heavy-ion testing; Milli-Beam; SEE; SER; SET; SEU; Single Event Effect; Single Event Transient; Single Event Upset; Soft Error Rate;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Reliability Physics Symposium (IRPS), 2011 IEEE International

Conference_Location

Monterey, CA

ISSN

1541-7026

Print_ISBN

978-1-4244-9113-1

Electronic_ISBN

1541-7026

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/IRPS.2011.5784595

Filename

5784595