Physics & Astronomy

Single Event Upset Imaging with an Ion-Photon Emission Microscope

Henry Jauregui, Paolo Rossi, Janelle Villone, George Vizkelethy and Barney L. Doyle

Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM, 87185-1056*

Abstract

We have developed a tabletop IPEM that uses a Po-210 alpha particle source to observe Single Event Upset (SEU) errors in a Sandia developed 16K Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) ICs. The Ion Photon Emission Microscope (IPEM) enables performing single ion nuclear microscopy without the need to focus the beam, and hence can be used with our Po-210 source or any accelerated ions that are difficult or even impossible to focus to sub-micron dimensions.  This is accomplished by recording the position of each ion that strikes the sample using the photons generated by these ions in a thin luminescent film placed on top of the IC, and projecting, with an ordinary optical microscope, this light at high magnification onto a position sensitive detector capable of detecting single photons.  The selection of suitable materials for the iono-luminescent layer will be the focus of this talk.  Lightly N-doped GaN is currently the leading candidate for the luminescent layer.  The GaN, particularly that formed with multiple quantum wells of InGaN, is >10x more luminescent/unit length when exposed to ions than any other material we have examined (e.g. Bicron plastics and P47), and could be used for numerous applications encountered in accelerator physics, e.g. ultra low current beam viewers.  The ultimate goal of this R&D is to develop an IPEM Radiation Microscope to be located at one of the large cyclotron labs in the US to perform SEU-imaging on ICs with extremely thick overlayers, or even “Flip Chips” using multi-GeV energy heavy ions.  Our current plans to realize such a system will be presented, and we invite feedback from the SNEAP community.

*Sandia is a multi-program Laboratory operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin Company, for the United States Department of Energy's National Nuclear Security Administration under contract DE-AC04-94AL85000.