Modelling of alpha particle induced soft errors in Dynamic Random Access Memories (DRAM)

In order to model the alpha-particle-induced soft error phenomenon in Dynamic Random Access Memories (DRAM), analytical methods of Bradford, and Pickel and Blandform have been used to calculate the short length distribution in rectangular sensitive volumes, which are then compared with those for cylindrical volumes given by Charlton et al (Monte Carlo). Soft error rates (SER) for an alpha flux density of 10-4 particles.μm-2.s-1 incident on a 256 K DRAM have been calculated for a set of funnelling lengths in the range 1.5 - 4.5 μm, and compared. The experimental values are well within the range of the computed SERs, the methods for which need further development. (author)