Soft Error Characterization of D-FFs at the 5-nm Bulk FinFET Technology for the Terrestrial Environment
Yoni Xiong, A. Feeley, Nicholas J. Pieper, Dennis R. Ball, Balaji Narasimham, John D. Brockman, Nathaniel A. Dodds, S.A. Wender, Shixi Wen, Rita Fung, B. L. Bhuva
Abstract
Soft error rates (SER) are characterized for the 5-nm bulk FinFET D flip-flops for alpha particles, thermal neutrons, and high-energy neutrons as a function of supply voltage. At nominal operating voltage, the 5-nm node has higher SER than the 7-nm node for all three particle types, with increases of 148%, 168%, and 26%, respectively. The overall SER for the 5-nm node was ~2X greater than that of the 7-nm node, because the reduction in critical charge was higher than that in collected charge. For alpha particle exposures, temperature effects on SER were more prominent for the 5-nm node than both the 7-nm and 16-nm node. Relative contribution of alpha particle SER increases with scaling, and it accounts for 13% of the overall SER at the 5-nm node.