The effect of heavy metal in CMOS on neutron induced single event upset simulated with Geant4

TL;DR

This study uses Geant4 simulations to analyze how heavy metals like tungsten in CMOS structures influence neutron-induced single event upsets, revealing that tungsten can generate secondary alpha particles causing SEUs at low neutron energies.

Contribution

It introduces a simulation-based investigation of heavy metal effects on SEU in CMOS, highlighting tungsten's unique role in secondary particle generation at low neutron energies.

Findings

W causes alpha particle generation under neutron exposure

SEUs occur at neutron energies below 4 MeV with tungsten

Copper does not produce secondary alpha particles in the same conditions

Abstract

Local metal interconnection is widely used in modern complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology. The most frequently used local materials are some heavy metals, such as tungsten (W) or copper (Cu). It's well known that single event upset (SEU) could occur in a CMOS under neutron exposure. In this paper the rectangular parallelepiped (RPP) method is used to investigate the SEU response of a typical CMOS. SEU induced by 1$\sim$14\:MeV neutrons are simulated with Geant4 and the cross sections are calculated. The results show that only in the structure with W, secondary particle $\alpha$ is created and SEUs are generated when the energy of neutron is less than $4$\:MeV.