SE Response of Guard-Gate FF in 16- and 7-nm Bulk FinFET Technologies

Single-event (SE) performance of the guard-gate flip-flop (GG-FF) and conventional D-FF designs is evaluated at the 16- and 7-nm FinFET technology nodes. The heavy-ion test results show that at the 16-nm node, the GG-FF shows better SE performance for low-linear energy transfer (LET) particles and similar performance for high-LET particles compared with D-FF design. However, at the 7-nm node, the GG-FF shows better SE performance than the D-FF across a wide range of particle LET values. This behavior is due to the higher number of short SE transient (SET) pulses for high-LET particles at the 7-nm node. The heavy-ion test results are used to estimate the number of short SET pulses as a function of particle LET values.