Simulating single-event effects associated with high-energy neutrons for different VLSI technologies

A computer and a physical simulation are conducted of single-event effects associated with neutrons or protons of different energy for test VLSI circuits realized by modern technologies with a minimum feature size of 0.5 or 0.35 μm. The test specimens are found to be fairly susceptible to these effects. In particular, neutrons with an energy of order 1 MeV are shown to mainly cause single-event upsets with a threshold energy of about 1 MeV and a sensitive volume of order 1 μm3. As the minimum feature size is reduced, the threshold is predicted to decrease sharply due to a growing amplifying effect of the parasitic bipolar transistor.