2011 International Nuclear Atlantic Conference - INAC 2011 Belo Horizonte,MG, Brazil, October 24-28, 2011 ASSOCIAÇÃO BRASILEIRA DE ENERGIA NUCLEAR - ABEN ISBN: 978-85-99141-04-5 EVALUATION OF SOFT ERRORS RATE IN A COMMERCIAL MEMORY EEPROM Luiz H. Claro1, A. A. Silva1, José A. Santos1, Suzy F. L. Nogueira2, Ary G. Barrios Jr2. 1 Divisão de Energia Nuclear Instituto de Estudos Avançados , IEAv Caixa Postal 6044 12231-970 São José dos Campos, SP
[email protected] 2 Faculdade de Tecnologia São Francisco, FATESF Av. Siqueira Campos, 1174 12307-000 Jacareí, SP
[email protected] ABSTRACT Soft errors are transient circuit errors caused by external radiation. When an ion intercepts a p-n region in an electronic component, the ionization produces excess charges along the track. These charges when collected can flip internal values, especially in memory cells. The problem affects not only space application but also terrestrial ones. Neutrons induced by cosmic rays and alpha particles, emitted from traces of radioactive contaminants contained in packaging and chip materials, are the predominant sources of radiation. The soft error susceptibility is different for different memory technology hence the experimental study are very important for Soft Error Rate (SER) evaluation. In this work, the methodology for accelerated tests is presented with the results for SER in a commercial electrically erasable and programmable read-only memory (EEPROM). 1. INTRODUCTION From all possible kinds of radiation damages to electronic components, the soft errors are included in the class of transitory errors induced by a single particle. In the other class, the hard errors, the ionizing radiation permanently changes the structural array in the electronic components.