Simulation of cosmic-ray upset in integrated circuits

The tandem Van de Graaff accelerator was used to determined experimentally the critical charge values characteristic of a bipolar random-access memory chip. Bromine ions with kinetic energies ranging from 20 meV to 117 MeV (the latter energy was obtained with a charge state of 12 and a terminal voltage of 9 MV) were used to simulate cosmic-ray upset in the solid-state device. The data obtained for upset cross section as a function of Br-ion energy (collected charge) were in excellent agreement with theoretical modeling done earlier. Structure in the data which was predicted by the theoretical model was observed by selecting twenty-two values of Br-ion energy within the 20-117 MeV range. This experiment is the first one in which the physics governing the interaction of an ion track within a complex integrated circuit has been examined in detail