Low-power electronic technologies for harsh radiation environments

Abstract

Over the past decades, electronic technologies have evolved to serve a wide range of applications, with some necessitating their reliable operation in harsh radiation environments. This perspective article reviews the current landscape in rad-hard electronics, covering the scope of radiation environments, the application needs, the underlying phenomena that impose functional constraints as well as established design methodologies, relying on commercially available technologies (CMOS) for mitigating e↵ects that lead to failure. We further examine the potential of emerging memristive technologies in this field and their properties that render these rad-hard. We also review a variety of rad-hard device designs, rad-mitigation techniques, and experimental procedures for validating the performance of the most promising solutions. Finally, we conclude this article by presenting a roadmap on new concepts and application opportunities enabled by the introduction of novel technologies and designs that can reliably operate under such extreme conditions. topilot upsets that occur on average once in every 200 flight hours, notwithstanding, electrical upsets in automotive electronics and data centers. 3,7 In addition, the solar flares' intense particles and X-rays ionize and increase the density of the low layers of ionosphere, respectively, and interact with the electromagnetic waves resulting into disturbances in the high-frequency radio communication system by fading of the HF signal. 3 These problems eventually a↵ect the stability of the flight system, and tra c operations and navigations both in airspace and on the ground, where safety assurance is of primary importance. Similarly, the operation of nuclear facilities in a safety critical manner is of paramount importance and rad-hard technologies are commonly employed to enhance the overall safety margins. 8 Moreover, radiation e↵ects raise a concern in medical and industrial equipment where X-ray and are used for therapy and diagnostic purposes while in highenergy physics facilities, various particles and photons are generated by the collisions in particle accelerators which pose a severe challenge for the accelerator instrumentation and the radiation detection, data acquisition and communication in the embarked experiments. 9Nevertheless, rad-hard integrated circuit technologies often require additional processing and more complex configurations than the standard fabrication flow that makes the rad-hard electronics, particularly low-power electronic technologies, di cult to keep up with the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS) guide. 10 This article examines the latest logic and memory design techniques for radiation e↵ect mitigation and presents future trends for rad-hard technologies.

Analyzing Gamma-Ray Irradiation Effects on Carbon Nanotube Top-Gated Field-Effect Transistors

“…As reported, the trapping arising from Co-60 γ-rays could dope CNT FETs as either negative interface charge trapping or positive oxide charge trapping. 2,21,28 As shown in the energy band diagram of Figure 1b, the polarity of CNT FETs is controlled by applying a contact metal with a suitable work function to enable electron or hole injection into the channels. With exposure to γ-ray irradiation, radiation-induced charge trapping may change the energy band diagram of CNT FETs.…”

“…Carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have been considered a promising channel material for the construction of high-performance and scaled field-effect transistors (FETs), mainly owing to their outstanding carrier mobility, ultrathin body, and high stability. − Furthermore, CNT FETs and ICs have attracted considerable attention for applications in radiation environments because of the small cross section, strong C–C bonds at the nanometer scale, and low atomic numbers of the semiconducting channel. − Recently, many works have revealed the high radiation tolerance of CNT FETs by measuring the total ionizing dose (TID) response under different radiation sources, such as ions, γ-rays, and protons. − However, similar to the research on the radiation-hardened properties of new materials, such as two-dimensional (2D) layered transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs), metal–oxide thin films and graphene, , almost all of the research has focused on the radiation response of whole CNT FETs, and a detailed exploration of how radiation affects every individual component of FETs is absent, which hampers the understanding of the radiation mechanisms and building of radiation models for CNT FETs. As is well known, widely used electrical measurements cannot be utilized to analyze irradiation effects on the individual components of a transistor since radiation-induced interface charges in substrates and oxide charges in gate dielectrics induce opposite shifts in the threshold voltage, leading to a compensating effect …”

“…As is well known, widely used electrical measurements cannot be utilized to analyze irradiation effects on the individual components of a transistor since radiation-induced interface charges in substrates and oxide charges in gate dielectrics induce opposite shifts in the threshold voltage, leading to a compensating effect. 28 In this work, we used a controllable experimental method, which was first proposed by Arnold et al, 29 to decouple the TID radiation effects on different individual components of a top-gated CNT FET, including the CNT channel, gate dielectric, and substrate. Analysis of the irradiation effect on these individual components is helpful for finding ways to strengthen the radiation tolerance of CNT FETs.…”

A Review of Semiconductor Based Ionising Radiation Sensors Used in Harsh Radiation Environments and Their Applications

“…However, in the future, once the methods are developed for on-chip 3-D integration, the 3-D flash memories could present a viable option. In addition, recent times have seen the emergence of new semiconductor devices and memory technologies as a result of continuous scientific efforts [128,129]. Recently, silicon photonic devices have also been experimented to find out the radiation effects [130][131][132][133].…”

General Model for Defect Dynamics in Ionizing‐Irradiated SiO2‐Si Structures

“…The electrical properties of the most‐widely‐used silicon devices degrade in space, nuclear, and avionic applications. [ 1,2 ] This is because persistent ionizing irradiation induces centers in the dielectric silica (SiO 2 ) layer and P b centers at the silica/silicon (SiO 2 /Si) interface, respectively, [ 3,4 ] which act as oxide‐trapped charges and interface traps (usually denoted as Δ N ot and Δ N it ) in the SiO 2 ‐Si structures and alter the performance of the devices, [ 5 ] called as a total ionizing dose (TID) effect. The centers are positively charged states of oxygen vacancies with puckered configuration (), [ 3,6 ] while the P b centers are positively charged silicon dangling bonds.…”