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

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.