S. Buchner et al., IMPLICATIONS OF THE SPATIAL DEPENDENCE OF THE SINGLE-EVENT-UPSET THRESHOLD IN SRAMS MEASURED WITH A PULSED-LASER, IEEE transactions on nuclear science, 41(6), 1994, pp. 2195-2202
Pulsed laser light was used to measure single event upset (SEU) thresh
olds for a large number of memory cells in both CMOS and bipolar SRAMs
. Results showed that small variations in intercell upset threshold co
uld not explain the gradual rise in the curve of cross section versus
linear energy transfer (LET). The memory cells exhibited greater intra
cell variations implying that the charge collection efficiency within
a memory cell varies spatially and contributes substantially to the sh
ape of the curve of cross section versus LET. The results also suggest
that the pulsed laser can be used for hardness-assurance measurements
on devices with sensitive areas larger than the diameter of the laser
beam.