Si(p,α) total‐reaction cross sections for microelectronic applications

When the nucleon component of the cosmic ray flux interacts with the silicon in computer memory chips, the resulting highly ionizing particles can cause memory errors. Therefore, the natural silicon and 27Al( p,α) and ( p,3He) total cross sections have been obtained at proton energies of 35 and 45 MeV by integrating the differential cross section angular distributions. The accuracy of the measurements is significantly better than previous measurements. These measurements, along with measurements from the literature, show the energy dependence of the Si( p,α) cross section. This energy dependence was convoluted with the cosmic ray flux to determine an upper limit for the failure rate of silicon microcircuits due to cosmic ray sources.