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Volume 40, Number 1, 1996
Terrestrial cosmic rays and soft errors |
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Table of contents:  HTML |
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Copyright info |
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Nuclear physics of cosmic ray interaction with semiconductor materials: Particle-induced soft errors from a physicist's perspective |
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by H. H. K. Tang |
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The key issues of cosmic-ray-induced soft-error rates, SER (also referred
to as single-event upset, SEU, rates) in microelectronic devices are
discussed from the viewpoint of fundamental atomic and nuclear
interactions between high-energy particles and semiconductors. From sea
level to moderate altitudes, the cosmic ray spectrum is dominated by
three particle species: nucleons (protons and neutrons), pions, and
muons. The characteristic features of high-energy nuclear reactions of
these particles with light elements are reviewed. A major cause of soft
errors is identified to be the ionization electron-hole pairs induced by
the secondary nuclear fragments produced in certain processes. These
processes are the inelastic collisions between the cosmic ray particles
and nuclei in the host material. A state-of-the-art nuclear spallation
reaction model, NUSPA, is developed to simulate these reactions. This
model is tested and validated by a large set of nuclear experiments. It
is used to generate the crucial database for the soft-error simulators
which are currently used throughout IBM for device and circuit analysis.
The relative effectiveness of nucleons, pions, and muons as
soft-error-inducing agents is evaluated on the basis of nuclear reaction rate
calculations and energy-deposition analysis.
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