Assessment of TID Effect of FRAM Memory Cell Under Electron, X-Ray, and Co- $60~\gamma $ Ray Radiation Sources

Abstract

This paper investigates the total ionizing dose (TID) effect of the memory cell of the ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) under electron, X-ray, and Co-60 γ ray radiation sources. An electron accelerator and an X-ray microbeam from synchrotron, which are used to simulate the given radiation environments, offer local irradiation on the FRAM memory cell. In addition, the Co-60 γ ray source provides global irradiation on the full chip of FRAM. The FRAM memory cell is proved to have a lower failure threshold for TID effect than the ferroelectric thin-film capacitor due to the performance degradation of nMOS transistor in memory cell. The failure phenomenon is studied according to the experimental results of different radiation sources, and the failure mechanism is discussed based on the technology and the characteristics of FRAM memory cell in circuit-level. The difference of device performance is also analyzed for electron irradiation and X-ray irradiation.