Development for Radiation Hardened Advanced Electronic Circuits

In response to SBIR topic MDA09-T006, USCI proposes to develop the first medium-level integrated circuit for radiation-tolerant applications. The advanced integrated circuit will be demonstrated based on a novel yet simple design SiC transistor that has the potential to provide a factor of 10X improvement in performance comparison to state-of-the-art. The SiC transistor can be fabricated by a substantially simplified processing technology that has been developed in-house. Phase I will be focused on the radiation-tolerant design of all critical device components, all subcircuit blocks and the final complete integration of the circuit. A large number of design paramters will be studied and optimized including the transistor radiation tolerance, switching speed, conduction loss, blocking voltage, overall efficiency and temperature dependence. Phase II will be focused on (i) the fabrication of multiple batches of the critical device components, subcircuit blocks and the completely integrated circuits, (ii) the electrical and thermal characterization of all components, subcircuit blocks and the entire IC, and (iii) the evaluation of radiation tolerance of the key device components, subcircuit blocks and the complete ICs. Phase III will be focused on improving manufacturing yield and packaging of the IC for prototype system demonstration.