Muon-Induced Single Event Upsets in Deep-Submicron Technology

Experimental data are presented that show low-energy muons are able to cause single event upsets in 65 nm, 45 nm, and 40 nm CMOS SRAMs. Energy deposition measurements using a surface barrier detector are presented to characterize the kinetic energy spectra produced by the M20B surface muon beam at TRIUMF. A Geant4 application is used to simulate the beam and estimate the energy spectra incident on the memories. Results indicate that the sensitivity to this mechanism will increase for scaled technologies.