Design, testing and calibration of a "reference SEU monitor" system

Abstract

Accelerator Single Event Effect (SEE) testing is often carried out using beams calibrated and monitored by the facility provider. Occasionally these beam data have been incorrect due to unknown detector degradations, faulty detectors, set-up changes, misalignments or contaminated beams. The facility user (experimenter) has no means of checking suspicious beams and often discovers data discrepancies too late, often at home base when analysing the data previously gathered on-site. So in order to minimise test errors due to faulty beams, the user should have a simple reference system that allows beam re-checking capabilities. Such a system, based on Single Event Upsets (SEUs) in a Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) and the use of a laptop, is described here. The basic design of the 'Reference SEU Monitor' is detailed, including selection and calibration of SRAMs under different heavy ion, proton and neutron test conditions. The selected SRAM type, Atmel AT60142F, was further SEU characterised and extensive validated under extreme test conditions such as high temperature and total dose.