Monte Carlo Simulations to Evaluate the Contribution of Si Bulk, Interconnects, and Packaging to Alpha-Soft Error Rates in Advanced Technologies

At ground level, alpha particles are a major source of soft errors. They may result from radioactive isotopes found in electronic device materials. In this paper, the materials' contributions to alpha particle-induced Soft Error Rate (SER) and MCU are evaluated for a 65 nm CMOS technology. The trend of SER on 45 and 32 nm is also reported in this paper. These evaluations are performed by Monte Carlo simulations, taking into account the radioactive impurity contamination levels in the device.