Radiation Effects and Hardening by Design in CMOS Technologies

Abstract

Radiation threatens the correct functionality of electronics in space, avionics, nuclear and High Energy Physics (HEP) applications. The engineering community involved in each of these disciplines has developed over time its specific set of solutions to ensure system reliability. The specificity is dictated by requirements in terms of cost, accessibility and mission criticality of each component/system. In some cases, the selection and use of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf components (COTS) represents the cheapest and most practical solution. Nevertheless, the need for extensive irradiation campaigns in view of selecting first, then assuring reproducible radiation response of the components increases the cost and required testing resources. On the other hand, the development or purchase of dedicated "radiation-tolerant" components eases qualification and procurement and ensures the required level of reliability, but is typically more expensive. A small catalog of radiation-tolerant components is in fact accessible commercially at a cost/function ratio considerably larger than for COTS. This cost is in part determined by the need for using a dedicated manufacturing process (most often CMOS) qualified against radiation effects. The low volume of this market, together with its strict quality assurance requirements, make the business profitable for a small number of "niche" foundries only if silicon wafers can be sold at large prices for a relatively long time. Processes are therefore not phased out as quickly as in the commercial marketplace, and new developments take more time. As a result, they are typically lagging two generations or more behind commercial-grade products.An alternative approach, increasingly popular in the last decade, is based on the use of commercial standard CMOS technologies. Integrated Circuits (ICs) are designed with dedicated techniques to withstand radiation effects, an approach that is called "Hardness By Design" (HBD). This allows circuit designers to using state-of-the-art processes to design ICs, while at the same time delivering radiationtolerant components. In doing so, designers must be aware of the radiation effects H.

ENC Measurement for ASIC Preamp Board as a Detector Module for PET System

“…By analyzing the ENC curve, it can be concluded that the electronic devices can suffer from long-term radiation effects, and the effects are mostly due to electrons and protons [7]. Furthermore, this cumulative long term ionizing damage due to protons and electrons can cause devices to suffer threshold shifts, increased device leakage (and power consumption), timing changes, and decreased functionality [8,9].…”