Influence of proton elastic scattering on soft error generation of SRAMs

It is known that protons usually do not deposit sufficient energy in a static random access memory (SRAM) cell to produce single-event-upsets (SEU) by direct ionization. In this work a model for the influence of elastically scattered protons is presented which explains the experimentally obtained SEU rate for protons at energies well below the Coulomb barrier threshold. A quantitative fit-parameter-free calculation of upsets is provided. Experimental results of low energy proton and helium irradiation of a 32 nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) SRAM are presented to validate the model.