Single-event-transient effects in sub-70 nm bulk and SOI FinFETs

After fourteen years of research and investigations by engineers in the university and industry communities, FinFET devices are finally ready to use in products [1-2]. FinFET technologies have been demonstrated to outperform planar technologies for high speed, low power and high performance applications, while maintaining the shrinking trends of microelectronics (beyond 32 nm) for at least the next two to three technology generations. These promising findings were enough for leading chip manufacturers like Intel to announce their plans to mass-produce FinFETs in the near future [3-4]. However, the device response in extreme environments (i.e., space) is still not well understood. Exploring the behavior of FinFETs in such environments is also important for the aerospace and medical industries, where unhardened commercial off the shelf (COTS) electronics are used.;The objective of this work is to explore the transient electrical behavior of FinFET devices in both bulk and SOI technologies in radiation-rich environments through laser and heavy ion testing. A further objective of this work is to contribute to improving the performance of FinFET devices, in particular in harsh environments. Indeed, the new results obtained in this work identify the physical regions in the devices that are most sensitive to radiation effects and how they affect the radiation response. The findings will help engineers to design new generations of FinFET devices with higher tolerance to radiation effects.