Improved weapons and harsh space environment radiation effects models for the Peregrine 0.5 um and 0.25 um Silicon on Sapphire (SOS) processes

Designing strategic electrical systems to operate reliably in harsh radiation environments typically requires an extensive amount of circuit modeling at the gate level. In order to simulate the system response to radiation damage accurately, models for thetransistors used in circuit simulation must be developed to reflect parametric shifts caused total ionizing dose exposure and transients caused by single event effects and prompt dose exposure. The current commercially available circuit simulators utilizetransistor-level compact models (e.g. BSIM3) that reproduce most standard gate-level electrical characteristics with a fair degree of accuracy. However, a transistor's electrical response to radiation exposure is typically not standard and, hence, notreproducible with even the most advanced model commercially available today. The thrust of this project is to develop physics-based compact models for the Peregrine 0.5 um and 0.25 um fully depleted, silicon-on-sapphire (SOS) CMOS process and to verifythese models by rigorous testing. These new compact models extend existing BSIM FDSOI models by adding new radiation effects parameters (where necessary) and modifying existing parameters in order to accurately simulate in a wide variety of radiationenvironments, particularly the hostile strategic and space environments. While the Peregrine silicon-on-sapphire processes are extremely resistant to radiation effects, a weapons environment or harsh space environment can still cause problems. Hence,circuits need to be tested. Reliable radiation effects models would accelerate the development and reduce the risks associated with designing IC's that may need to operate under such conditions.