Testing a Commercial MRAM Under Neutron and Alpha Radiation in Dynamic Mode

Academic and industrial research interest in terrestrial radiation effects of electronic devices has expanded over the last years from avionics and military applications to commercial applications as well. At the same time, the need for faster and more reliable memories has given growth to new memory technologies such as Magnetic (magneto-resistive) Random Access Memories (MRAM), a promising new non-volatile memory technology that will probably replace in the future the current SRAM and FLASH based memories. In this paper, we evaluate the soft error resilience of a commercial toggle MRAM in static and dynamic test mode, under neutron radiation with energies of 25, 50 and 80 MeV as well as under a Californium (Cf-252) alpha source.

[1]  B. Dieny,et al.  Thermally assisted switching in exchange-biased storage layer magnetic tunnel junctions , 2004, IEEE Transactions on Magnetics.

[2]  L. Scheick,et al.  Analysis of radiation effects on individual DRAM cells , 2000 .

[3]  Arnaud Virazel,et al.  Evaluation of test algorithms stress effect on SRAMs under neutron radiation , 2012, 2012 IEEE 18th International On-Line Testing Symposium (IOLTS).

[4]  J. C. Pickel,et al.  Use of CF-252 to Determine Parameters for SEU Rate Calculation , 1985, IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science.

[5]  R. W. Dave,et al.  A 4-Mb toggle MRAM based on a novel bit and switching method , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Magnetics.

[6]  A. Omair,et al.  A 4-Mb 0.18-/spl mu/m 1T1MTJ toggle MRAM with balanced three input sensing scheme and locally mirrored unidirectional write drivers , 2005, IEEE Journal of Solid-State Circuits.

[7]  Arnaud Virazel,et al.  Advanced Test Methods for SRAMs: Effective Solutions for Dynamic Fault Detection in Nanoscaled Technologies , 2009 .

[8]  裕幸 飯田,et al.  International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors 2003の要求清浄度について － シリコンウエハ表面と雰囲気環境に要求される清浄度, 分析方法の現状について － , 2004 .

[9]  A. Lesea,et al.  The rosetta experiment: atmospheric soft error rate testing in differing technology FPGAs , 2005, IEEE Transactions on Device and Materials Reliability.

[10]  A. J. van de Goor,et al.  Testing Semiconductor Memories: Theory and Practice , 1998 .

[11]  Mohamed Elghefari,et al.  Radiation effects assessment of MRAM devices , 2008 .

[12]  Jing Zhang,et al.  Progress and outlook for STT-MRAM , 2011, 2011 IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design (ICCAD).

[13]  J. Otterstedt,et al.  Integration of non-classical faults in standard March tests , 1998, Proceedings. International Workshop on Memory Technology, Design and Testing (Cat. No.98TB100236).

[14]  K. Ounadjela,et al.  Effects of swift heavy ion bombardment on magnetic tunnel junction functional properties , 2003 .

[15]  Marian Marinescu,et al.  Simple and Efficient Algorithms for Functional RAM Testing , 1982, ITC.

[16]  L. Dilillo,et al.  Neutron-Induced Multiple Bit Upsets on Two Commercial SRAMs Under Dynamic-Stress , 2012, IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science.