Alpha Particle Soft-Error Rates for D-FF Designs in 16-Nm and 7-Nm Bulk FinFET Technologies

Since FinFET -based circuits have been proven to have better stability at low supply voltages than planar transistor-based circuits, designers are expected to use a wide range of supply voltages for FinFET -based circuits to manage power requirements. Therefore, it is important to investigate the soft error performance over a range of supply voltages. In this work, soft error Failure-in- Time (FIT)rates of D-Flip-Flop (D-FF)designs in 16-nm and 7-nm bulk FinFET technologies are characterized with alpha particle irradiations. Results show that the rate of increase in FIT rates for 7-nm FF designs are significantly higher, on average, than those for 16-nm FF designs as supply voltage is reduced.