Impact of heavy-ion nuclear reactions on single event upset

This work investigates the effect of nuclear reactions resulting from the interaction of heavy-ion with the specific devices on single event upset (SEU), since the traditional application of linear energy transfer (LET) as an engineering metric may be unsatisfied on SEU characterization or has no ability to directly present the property of nuclear reaction (including its probability and secondary ions). Using Monte Carlo simulation and in-depth analysis, this study provides a powerful comparison between direct ionization processes and the one within nuclear reactions. The different heavy ions have been applied in simulation to characterize the role of nuclear reactions in SEU occurrence. The results show that the contribution of heavy-ion nuclear reactions to SEU cross section depends on ion energy with a nonmonotonic relationship. Based on the simulated results, suggestions were put forward that the worst case of SEU occurrence induced by heavy-ion nuclear reactions should be considered to predict the on-orbit SEU rate. (authors)