Impact of time and space evolution of ion tracks in nonvolatile memory cells approaching nanoscale

Swift heavy ions impacting on matter lose energy through the creation of dense tracks of charges. The study of the space and time evolution of energy exchange allows understanding the single event effects behavior in advanced microelectronic devices. In particular, the shrinking of minimum feature size of most advanced memory devices makes them very interesting test vehicles to study these effects since the device and the track dimensions are comparable; hence, measured effects are directly correlated with the time and space evolution of the energy release. In this work we are studying the time and space evolution of ion tracks by using advanced non volatile memories and Monte Carlo simulations. Experimental results are very well explained by the theoretical calculations. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics.