Modeling single event upsets in Floating Gate memory cells

Abstract

We model soft errors in Floating Gate (FG) memory cells due to charge loss after single radiation particle strikes. In contrast to various classical models, we show that the transient carrier flux over the oxide barriers coming into and out of the floating gate from high energy tail of the generated carriers can be the dominant mechanism of charge loss. We use this model to quantify the single event upset (SEU) susceptibility of FG memory technologies for cosmic ray neutrons and alpha particle strikes. We predict that the SEU sensitivity of FG memory cells will significantly increase with future cell scaling.