[SI-LIST] Re: SEU caused by laser illumination

  • From: "Daniel, Erik S., Ph.D." <Daniel.Erik@xxxxxxxx>
  • To: Huiyun.Li@xxxxxxxxxxxx, si-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2005 09:35:27 -0500

Huiyun-

There is a wealth of information in the literature on this topic.  If you
have access to IEEE journals, there are lots of articles specifically in
IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science.  Although there are many contributors,
researchers at NRL and NASA (e.g Art Campbell, Dale McMorrow, Marty Carts,
etc.) have been experts in laser-induced SEU for some time.  Most
information out there relates to CMOS devices and circuits.  I'm not an
expert in this area and don't know if they've identified differences in
response in n-FETs and p-FETs, but given that the p-FETs sit in an n-well, I
would be willing to bet there are significant differences.  I would expect a
targeted literature search would turn up something useful.

- Erik

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Erik Daniel, Ph.D.                   Voice:  (507) 538-5461      
Mayo Foundation                      Fax:    (507) 284-9171
200 First Street SW                  E-mail: daniel.erik@xxxxxxxx
Rochester, MN  55905                 Web:    www.mayo.edu/sppdg/
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Msg: #1 in digest
From: "Huiyun Li" <Huiyun.Li@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [SI-LIST] SEU caused by laser illumination
Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2005 14:38:41 +0100

Hi there,

I have a question about SEU (single-event-upset) in CMOS, hope it's relavent
to at least one of the SI-list topics.

I've been working on security/attacks on microprocessors, and is currently
working on the laser illumination attack, which causes ionization in silicon
and may change the state of the struck nodes, just as in a SEU caused by
heavy ions.

We got some experiment results (like reliably setting a register value to 0,
etc), which can be explained by the assumption that the radiation attack is
more
effective at turning on n-type transistors than their p-type counterparts.
However I can't find any references in SEU to prove this assumption, except
in some destructive effects (e.g. as for single event burnout (SEB), NMOS
are more sensitive to SEB than PMOS. bacause the impact ionization rate is
larger for electrons than for holes) .

I know bulk silicon has some different properties from epitaxial design in
aspect of SEU. Dopant concentrations may also affect the ionization rate.
Does it mean that  there is no solid rule about turning on n-type and p-type
with laser illumination?

Huiyun Li
Computer Laboratory
University of Cambridge
JJ Thomson Avenue
Cambridge CB3 0FD, UK
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