Susceptibility of Group-IV and III-V Semiconductor-Based Electronics to Atmospheric Neutrons Explored by Geant4 Numerical Simulations

Abstract

New semiconductor materials are envisaged in numerous high-performance applications for which the expected device or circuit performances cannot be achieved with silicon. In this context of growing use of new and specific semiconductors, the question of their susceptibility to natural radiation, primarily to atmospheric neutrons, is posed for high-reliability-level application domains. This numerical simulation work precisely examines nuclear events resulting from the interaction of atmospheric neutrons at the terrestrial level with a target layer composed of various group-IV and III-V semiconductor materials including silicon, germanium, silicon carbide, carbon-diamond, gallium arsenide, and gallium nitride materials. Using extensive Geant4 simulations and in-depth data analysis, this study provides an accurate and fine comparison between the neutron interaction responses of these different semiconductors in terms of nuclear processes, recoil products, secondary ion production, and fragment energy distributions. Implications of these results on the rate of single-event transient effects at the device or circuit level are also discussed.

Modelling and simulation of SEU in bulk Si and Ge SRAM

“…Since the integration of high-permittivity materials as an alternative to thermal gate oxides, germanium (Ge) CMOS is considered as a promising alternative to Si because the bulk mobility values of electrons and holes in Ge are much higher than those of electrons and holes in Si (see Table 1) [1][2][3][4]. From a radiation response point-of-view, the question of the susceptibility of Ge to natural radiation, primarily atmospheric neutrons, has been recently investigated [5]. On one hand, with a number of interactions close to the one observed in silicon for identical target geometries [5], Ge therefore presents a lower energy for electron-pair creation than Si due to its lower bandgap, 2.9 eV versus 3.6 eV respectively [6].…”

Interactions between Terrestrial Cosmic-Ray Neutrons and III–V Compound Semiconductors

“…Figure 2 shows that similar distributions of these particle groups are found for all materials, GaN excepted, with approximately 20-25% of protons+alphas, 60% of recoil products constituted of target nuclei, and the remaining 15% of other nuclei. In the case of GaN, the proportion of protons and alpha particles is more important and corresponds to approximately two times the proportion observed in silicon; this result can be explained by the additional production channels of protons and alpha particles offered by the 14 N(n,p) 14 C and 14 N(n,α) 11 and the presence of nitrogen are at the origin of such a large difference with respect to other III-V materials in terms of a higher number of interactions, of secondaries produced, and of alphas and protons. In addition to Figure 2, Figure 3 shows the exhaustive distribution of all secondaries produced in all materials as a function of Z.…”

“…Geant4 simulations were carried out following a methodology used in previous works [14,21,22]. We considered a target of bulk material (composed of a pure material chosen between the eight binary compounds studied) with a parallelepiped geometry (surface 1 cm 2 , thickness 20 μm).…”

“…Several studies investigating total ionizing dose (TID) and heavy ion and laser responses of III-V MOS transistors in modern architectures, as well as the creation mechanisms of single-event effects, have been reported in literature, but relatively little work concerns their response to terrestrial neutrons [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. In two recent papers [14,15], we begun such a systematic investigation of the susceptibility to natural radiation of group IV and III-V materials exposed.…”

Neutron activation of gadolinium for ion therapy: a Monte Carlo study of charged particle beams

“…Binary cascade has been validated to describe the production of secondary particles produced in interactions of protons and neutrons with nuclei. QGSP_BIC also uses the binary light ion cascade to model the inelastic interactions of ions up to a few GeV/nucleon with matter 36 . The list QGSP_BIC_HP has the addition of the high precision neutron package (NeutronHP) to transport neutrons below 20 MeV down to thermal energies 37 .…”