Modeling and Control of Alpha-Particle Effects in Scaled-Down VLSI Circuits

Transient "soft~-errors" in integrated circuits due to a particles or other ionizing radiation become more likely as circuit dimensions are scaled down, because smaller circuit capacitance and lower voltage reduce the amount of charge stored on a circuit node. The magnitude of the ionization-Induced excess charge collected in a circuit also is reduced by scaling, but accurate models for this effect have not been available. Recently, new simulation models have been developed and tested against experiments, which can accurately predict the collected charge for arbitrary geometries and other conditions. This talk reviews the present results of these models and shows how they can be applied to calculate the charge collected in 1 μm-dimension dynamic RAMS.