Assessing Alpha Particle-Induced Single Event Transient Vulnerability in a 90-nm CMOS Technology

The charge required to store (or potentially disturb) a digital logic signal decreases as feature sizes in advanced devices decrease. As a result, the soft-error rate has become a significant reliability issue for highly scaled technologies. Single-event transients (SETs), or glitches that originate in logic circuits, are one of the most important categories of soft errors. In this letter, SETs produced by heavy ions and alpha particles are measured using a specially designed IC. The first results identifying the conditions under which an alpha particle deposits enough charge to create a SET in a bulk 90-nm CMOS technology are presented.