Detection efficiency and spatial resolution of the SIRAD ion electron emission microscope

An axial ion electron emission microscope (IEEM) has been built at the SIRAD irradiation facility at the 15 MV Tandem accelerator of INFN Legnaro National Laboratory (Padova, Italy) to obtain a micrometric sensitivity map to single event effects (SEE) of electronic devices. In this contribution we report on two experiments performed with the IEEM. Si3N4 ultra-thin membranes with a gold deposition were placed on the device under test (DUT) to ensure a uniform and abundant secondary electron emission In the first experiment we measured an IEEM ion detection efficiency of 83% with a 58Ni (220 MeV) beam, in good agreement with the expected value. The second experiment allowed us to estimate the lateral resolution of the IEEM. The positions of ion induced single event upsets (SEU) in a synchronous dynamic random access memory (SDRAM), used as a reference target, were compared with the corresponding ion impact points reconstructed by the IEEM. The result (FWHM ∼4.4 μm with a 79Br beam of 214 MeV) is encouraging because of the residual presence of distortions of the image and mechanical vibrations.