Critical evaluation of the pulsed laser method for single event effects testing and fundamental studies

Abstract

In this paper we present an evaluation of the pulsed laser as a technique for single events effects (SEE) testing. We explore in detail the important optical effects, such as laser beam propagation, surface reflection, and linear and nonlinear absorption, which determine the nature of lasergenerated charge tracks in semiconductor materials. While there are differences in the structure of laser-and iongenerated charge tracks, we show that in many cases the pulsed laser remains an invaluable tool for SEE testing. Indeed, for several SEE applications, we show that the pulsed laser method represents a more practical approach than conventional accelerator-based methods.

The Effects of Low Dose-Rate Ionizing Radiation on the Shapes of Transients in the L>M124 Operational Amplifier

“…After receiving an incremental ionizing dose, the part was removed from the chamber and the electrical parameters measured before being transported to the pulsed laser test facility at the Naval Research Laboratory. (See [3] for experimental details.) The pristine and irradiated parts were mounted, end-on-end, in a single socket to facilitate the direct comparison of SETs in the two devices.…”

Comparison of SETs in bipolar linear circuits generated with an ion microbeam, laser light, and circuit simulation

“…In the x-y scan the dwell time at each position was such that only one or two ions hit each "pixel". The pulsed laser tests were performed using the NRL and Aerospace laser test facilities [8,9]. Although the NRL and Aerospace lasers have the same capabilities, they were operated under slightly different conditions.…”

Practicality of evaluating soft errors in commercial sub-90 nm CMOS for space applications

“…In lieu of heavy ion testing, pulsed laser irradiation has grown as an evaluation technique, largely due to the work of several groups [37,38,[51][52][53]. While there have been several direct comparisons of pulsed laser data to heavy ion data, cf.…”