Active Precharge Hammering to Monitor Displacement Damage Using High-Energy Protons in 3x-nm SDRAM

Abstract

This paper proposes the Active Precharge Hammering on a Row (APHR) test to evaluate displacement damage (DD) in 3x-nm DRAM components. Irradiated SDRAM devices could have multiple current leakage paths, partly owing to DD effects. The degree of leakage from cells with DD can be differentiated from undamaged cells by the difference in the number of hammered accesses to the two types of cells. Proton-based SER tests were performed with DDR3 SDRAM components made using 3x-nm technologies. The experimental results showed that bit errors caused by the APHR test (APHR errors) were more than five times higher in the irradiated sample compared to the non-irradiated sample, and APHR errors were not detectable within 64-ms retention time using the traditional retention test method. In the worst case, the number of hammerings required to cause an APHR error in the irradiated sample reduced by 36 times compared to that in the non-irradiated sample even after the irradiated sample was annealed at 150 degrees C so as to have no retention errors within the maximum retention time of 64-ms.