Profiling of collimated swift ion microbeam using 16Mbit DRAM

Abstract High-energy heavy-ion microbeams are useful for studying single-event phenomena(SEP) in semiconductor devices. However, current SEP research is concentrating on higher energies provided by cyclotrons. Focusing such high-energy beams is extremely difficult so we have taken the approach of using microcollimator to form a highly collimated beam which can then be positioned accurately on the device under test. In order to measure the beam profiles produced by such a system, we have employed a 16 Mbit DRAM (dynamic random access memory) to measure both the occurrence of a single-event upset and its spatial location. Using the DRAM method, 150 MeV 40 Ar 8+ beams collimated to 100 μm have been characterized. The results indicate that high integrated memory devices can replace a position-sensitive detector (PSD) and provide an even higher spatial resolution.