A temperature dependence analysis of the single event transient current induced by heavy ions irradiation is performed in the range of 300K to 500K on a 1μm SOI CMOS MOSFET standard 6T-SRAM cell. The Sentaurus TCAD mixedmode numerical simulation showed a significant impact of the temperature on the current induced by the radiation and as a result, an increase of the 6T-SRAM sensitivity upon radiation. A SOI MOSFET compact model introduced in SPICE as a Verilog-A module reproducing the single event effects was developed. This model shows a very good agreement with the TCAD simulations results but with a drastic reduction of the simulation time. Furthermore this model could be extended to other circuits simulations. This result is of importance to allow for extensive circuit design studies which cannot be carried out with TCAD physical simulations.
This paper presents an ultra-low power CMOS voltage reference circuit which is robust under biomedical extreme conditions, such as high temperature and high total ionized dose (TID) radiation. To achieve such performances, the voltage reference is designed in a suitable 130 nm Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) industrial technology and is optimized to work in the subthreshold regime of the transistors. The design simulations have been performed over the temperature range of −40–200 °C and for different process corners. Robustness to radiation was simulated using custom model parameters including TID effects, such as mobilities and threshold voltages degradation. The proposed circuit has been tested up to high total radiation dose, i.e., 1 Mrad (Si) performed at three different temperatures (room temperature, 100 °C and 200 °C). The maximum drift of the reference voltage VREF depends on the considered temperature and on radiation dose; however, it remains lower than 10% of the mean value of 1.5 V. The typical power dissipation at 2.5 V supply voltage is about 20 μW at room temperature and only 75 μW at a high temperature of 200 °C. To understand the effects caused by the combination of high total ionizing dose and temperature on such voltage reference, the threshold voltages of the used SOI MOSFETs were extracted under different conditions. The evolution of VREF and power consumption with temperature and radiation dose can then be explained in terms of the different balance between fixed oxide charge and interface states build-up. The total occupied area including pad-ring is less than 0.09 mm2.
We present three ultra-low-power CMOS circuits: a temperature sensor, a voltage reference and a comparator developed for an ultra-low-power microsystem (ULP-MST) aiming at temperature sensing in harsh environments. The microsystem has 3 main functions: detecting a user-defined temperature threshold T0, generating a wake-up signal that turns on a data-acquisition microprocessor (located in a safe area) above T0, and measuring temperatures above T0.
To achieve ultra-low-power operation, the three CMOS circuits are implemented in Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) CMOS technology and are optimized to work in the subthreshold regime of the transistors. Since our application is mainly for harsh environment (i.e. high temperature and radiation), the chip has been designed using a suitable 1-μm SOI-CMOS technology. Simulations have been performed over the different process corners to verify functionality after fabrication. The typical power dissipation at high temperature (up to 240°C) is less than 100 μW at 5 V supply voltage. Measurements have validated correct operation in the temperature range from −40°C to 300°C before radiation and to 125°C after radiation up to now which will be extended further with a new set-up.
Irradiation has been performed from 10 to 30 kGy. Such very high doses cause a shift down of output voltage values, which leads to a change of the temperature detection level and also increases the power dissipation by up to six times. Annealing effects help the partial recovery of the device operation at high temperature and the remote microprocessor enables calibration after radiation to readjust the temperature detection level.
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