The Plateau de Bure ASTEP Platform Test in natural radiation environment of electronic components and circuits

Reducing the size of microelectronic devices and increasing the integration density of circuits lead (following the famous Moore's law) to an increased sensitivity of circuits to natural terrestrial radiation environment. - Such sensitivity to atmospheric particles (mainly neutrons) can cause non-destructive (soft-errors) or destructive (latch-up) failures in most electronic circuits, including volatile static memories (SRAM), object of the research work carried out since 2004 on the European Test Platform ASTER. - This paper presents in details the ASTEP platform, its location, the instruments (neutron monitor of the Plateau de Bure) and the experiences (memory tester) currently installed on the Plateau de Bure. In a second part, we also report a synthesis of the key results concerning the natural radiation sensitivity of SRAM fabricated in 130 nm and 65 nm bulk silicon technologies. (authors)