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At least 19 records

Heavy-ion-induced displacement damage effects in magnetic tunnel junctions with perpendicular anisotropy

Here, we evaluate the resilience of CoFeB/MgO/CoFeB magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) with perpendicular magnetic anisotropy to displacement damage induced by heavy ion irradiation. MTJs were exposed to 3 MeV Ta 2+ ions at different levels of ion beam fluence spanning five orders of magnitude. The devices remained insensitive to beam fluences up to 10 11 ions/cm 2 , beyond which a gradual degradation in the device magnetoresistance, coercive magnetic field, and spin-transfer-torque switching voltage were observed, ending with a complete loss of magnetoresistance at very high levels of displacement damage (>0.035 displacements per atom). The loss of magnetoresistance is attributed to structural damage at the MgO interfaces, which allows electrons to scatter among the propagating modes within the tunnel barrier and reduces the net spin polarization. Ion-induced damage to the interface also reduces the perpendicular magnetic anisotropy. This study clarifies the displacement damage thresholds that lead to significant irreversible changes in the characteristics of spin-transfer-torque magnetic random access memory (STT-MRAM) and elucidates the physical mechanisms underlying the deterioration in device properties.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Evaluation of the GaAs displacement damage metric using updated nuclear data

The emerging use of the physics-based athermal recombination-corrected displacement per atom (arc-dpa) model for the displacement damage efficiency has motivated a re-evaluation of the historical empirically-derived GaAs damage response function with the purpose of highlighting needs for future analytical and experimental work. The 1-MeV neutron damage equivalence methodology used in the ASTM E-722 standard for GaAs has been re-evaluated using updated nuclear data. This yielded a higher fidelity representation of the GaAs displacement kerma and, through the use of the refined PKA recoil energy-dependent damage efficiency model, an updated 1-MeV(GaAs) displacement damage function. This re-evaluation included use of the Norgett-Robinson-Torrens (NRT) model for an updated threshold treatment, rather than the sharp-threshold Kinchin-Pease model used in the current ASTM standard. The underlying nuclear data evaluations have been updated to use the ENDF/VIII.0 {sup 75}As and TENDL-2019 {sup 71}Ga/{sup 69}Ga evaluations. The displacement kerma and 1-MeV-equivalent damage responses were calculated using a modified NJOY-2016 code which allowed for refinements in some of the damage models. This paper shows that an updated displacement damage function, based upon the latest nuclear data, is consistent with the experimental data used to develop the current ASTM E-722 GaAs standard. Using a double ratio approach to compare the available experimental data with the calculated response, the average legacy double ratio was found to be 0.97 ± 0.05 and the average updated double ratio was found to be 0.94 ± 0.05. (authors)

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Predicting displacement damage for ion irradiation: Origin of the overestimation of vacancy production in SRIM full-cascade calculations

Ion irradiation and implantation have wide applications that demand accurate determination of displacement damage profile and distribution of implanted ion concentration. The prediction of vacancies is especially important to determine displacements per atom (dpa), the standard parameter of primary radiation damage in materials. However, significant discrepancies exist in estimations of vacancies between full-cascade (F-C) and quick calculation (Q-C) options in the popular computer code SRIM. This study inspected the SRIM code and a relatively new code called Iradina, which uses a similar methodology, to develop an understanding of the origin of vacancy overestimation in the F-C options for SRIM and Iradina. Here, we found that the default values of thresholds (namely final energy in SRIM and replacement energy in Iradina) in displacement production calculations results in excessively large number of calculated vacancies and very few replacements. After conducting multiple calculations using SRIM, Iradina, and MARLOWE (all based on the binary collision approximation), a comparison of the results indicates that there is a shortcoming in the SRIM and Iradina F-C methodology for treating near-threshold collisions. This issue is responsible for the deficiency of replacements and excess of calculated vacancies in the SRIM and Iradina F-C results. Drawing on the principles of collision physics, we propose recommendations for modifying the source codes to address these issues.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Statistical analysis of displacement damage in small devices from neutron and ion irradiation

Modern semiconductor devices, such as gate-all-around nanosheet field-effect transistors (GAA NS FETs), are smaller than displacement damage cascades from fission neutrons. In this regime, device failure may occur through low-probability single events, rather than by parametric degradation previously seen in larger devices. Here, we present a statistical model that predicts the probability of a damage event in a small device and the probability distribution of the magnitude, i.e., number of displacements within the device, from each event. The model is developed first for neutron irradiation and then for energetic ion irradiation. The model is consistent with results from recent experiments in which lithium-ion irradiation produced stepwise increases in subthreshold current in GAA NS FETs.

Wampler, W. R.↗

Development and Qualification of Advanced Alloys Used in High Helium and Displacement Damage Service for Fusion Energy Applications

This document represents a final report on the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science, Office of Fusion Energy Science (OFES) Grant Entitled “Development and Qualification of Advanced Alloys Used in High Helium and Displacement Damage Service for Fusion Energy Applications” (DE-FG02-94ER54275). This grant has been funded since 1994, by a series of five and three-year renewals. We express our deep appreciation for the long-standing support by OFES for our fusion materials research. The latest three-year renewal was awarded in 2019. This renewal subsequently received a 1- year no-cost extension, followed by another funded 1-year phaseout period. Here, we focus on this five-year effort. The final report is composed of 35 Fusion Semiannual Reports covering the period from 2019 to 2024. In addition, Appendix A lists 158 fusion materials papers published since 1994, with the partial, or full, support of the OFES program. We note that, as metrics of their high impact, these papers have received a total of 8582 citations, with an average of 54 per paper.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Impact of amorphous pockets on displacement damage evolution in silicon

Silicon has long been known to exhibit amorphization in response to heavy particle bombardment. For doses below the total amorphization threshold, partial amorphization is observed in the form of scattered amorphous pockets. While extensive research has gone into modeling the formation and evolution of amorphous pockets in response to irradiation, no studies yet investigate their impact on the evolution of other damage such as interstitial supersaturation and clustering. In this study, we survey the impact of amorphous pockets on defect evolution in silicon when treated as static sinks. MD is first used to show that amorphous pockets provide energetically favorable sites for point defects relative to the crystalline bulk, supporting the hypothesis that they act as sinks. A 0-D cluster dynamics model is then constructed, taking an interstitial clustering model from the literature and including amorphous pockets as a sink species. We conduct our survey for temperatures between 30 and 400 °C and sink strengths between 1 to 6 x 10 10 cm −2 . Both implantation- and radiation-induced damage states are investigated using interstitial and vacancy concentrations as initial condition variables. We find that, due to the differing migration rates of the interstitial and the vacancy, amorphous pockets have a non-monotonic impact on the final damage state depending on the effective sink strength of the amorphous pockets, resulting in increased damage formation in regimes of intermediate amorphization. In conclusion, this result emphasizes the important role of amorphous pockets in governing the evolution of damage in partially amorphized crystalline materials.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

Bias-dependent displacement damage effects in a silicon avalanche photodiode

Radiation effects studies on a commercial beveled-edge avalanche photodiode (APD) showed that applying reverse bias to the device during irradiation enhanced the severity of apparent damage. Proton microbeam irradiations were made using a proton beam energy of 2 MeV and fluence ranging from 2.0 × 10 10 to 5.1 × 10 12 cm -2 . Charge collection measurements using the ion beam induced charge (IBIC) technique showed that relative losses increased by up to an order of magnitude when the reverse bias applied during irradiation increased from 50 to 1500 V. The presence of reverse bias also led to equivalent losses in charge collection that would only be seen in irradiations with an order of magnitude higher fluence in unbiased APDs. The results demonstrate that bias-enhanced irradiation damage is insufficiently understood and must be accounted for in characterizations of radiation effects.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗