Electrical modeling of the photoelectric effect induced by a pulsed laser applied to an SRAM cell

• Study of the sensitive areas due to Photoelectric Laser Stimulation of a SRAM cell.
• Hypothesis of masking effet of sensitive areas.
• Electrical modeling to confirm our hypothesis.

This abstract presents an electrical model of an SRAM cell exposed to a pulsed Photoelectrical Laser Stimulation (PLS), based on our past model of MOS transistor under laser illumination. The validity of our model is assessed by the very good correlation obtained between measurements and electrical simulation. These simulations are capable to explain some specific points. For example, in theory, a SRAM cell under PLS have four sensitive areas. But in measurements only three areas were revealed. A hypothesis was presented in this paper and confirmed by electrical simulation. The specific topology of the cell masks one sensitive area. Therefore the electrical model could be used as a tool of characterization of a CMOS circuits under PLS.