In situ Performance of Non-Volatile Memory under Mixed Radiation Environment

Nonvolatile memory technologies have paved the way for in-memory computing, eliminating the constant need to move data between storage and processing units. This reduces the von Neumann bottleneck and can significantly boost a system's effective floating operations per second (FLOPs). However, their performance evolution under irradiation from cosmic rays, solar storms, neutrons, and other secondary sources has not been extensively studied. To explore device degradation, we developed a testing apparatus at the University of Florida training reactor (UFTR) to perform in situ electronic measurements under varying gamma and neutron radiation profiles. The 6" diameter cylindrical setup fits inside one of the reactor beam ports and includes a Peltier thermal controller coupled to a 4-terminal electrical microprobe with variable radiation shielding. To delineate different radiation beam environments, specifically gamma rays, thermal, epithermal, and fast neutrons, shielding materials such as borated polyethylene, standard polyethylene, and lead are used. Here, we demonstrate the platform's effectiveness by examining self-directed channel (SDC) memristors, ferroelectric capacitors (FeCAPs), and resistive random-access memory (ReRAM) devices both in volatile and non-volatile configurations (i.e., 1T-1R and 1R). The experiments were conducted within the temperature range of -30° C to 120° C across a range of reactor power levels from 1W to 10kW with a total flux of 2.035 x 10⁸ particles/cm² at 100kW. We will further discuss radiation effects pertinent to various memory architectures, elaborating on device failure induced under radiation and total ionizing dose.