Tools for modeling radioactive contaminants in chip materials

Frédéric Wrobel (1, 2) , A. Kaouache (1, 2) , F. Saigné (1, 2) , Antoine Touboul (1, 2) , R. D. Schrimpf (3) , G. Warot (4) , Olivier Bruguier (5)

1 IES - Institut d’Electronique et des Systèmes
2 RADIAC - Radiations et composants
3 Vanderbilt University [Nashville]
4 LSM - UMR 6417 - Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane
5 Géosciences Montpellier

Radioactive pollutants are naturally present in microelectronic device materials and can be an issue for the reliability of devices. The main concern is alpha emitters that produce high-energy particles (a few MeV) that ionize the semiconductor and then trigger soft errors. The question is to know what kinds of radionuclides are present in the device, their location in the device and the abundance of each species. In this paper we describe tools that are required to address the issue of radioactive pollutants in electronic devices.

Mots clés: alpha pollutants; specific activity; SER; radioactive contaminants; radionuclide; uranium

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Frédéric Wrobel, A. Kaouache, F. Saigné, Antoine Touboul, R. D. Schrimpf, et al.. Tools for modeling radioactive contaminants in chip materials. Semiconductor Science and Technology, 2017, 32 (3), pp.034001. ⟨10.1088/1361-6641/aa5479⟩. ⟨hal-01504448⟩