New Design Technologies for Radiation Hardened Microelectronics

"Radiation-hardening by design (RHBD) permits the use of available commercial fabrication lines of high performance circuits, but the radiation-hardened (rad-hard) devices and cells are usually associated with a larger area, higher-power consumption, andslower performance. CFDRC in collaboration with Mission Research Corp. (MRC) and Vanderbilt University will develop novel RHBD concepts at the transistor and primitive cell level, which are more compact than current rad-hard designs. The proposedinnovations include: 1) Integrated computational environment to develop new rad-hard designs, utilizing 3D device simulations with radiation effects; 2) Numerical, automated optimization of primitive logic and memory cells (layouts) for mitigation ofSingle Event Effects in submicron CMOS; 3) Calculation of operational parameters of the designed cells to determine their radiation tolerance. In Phase I, CFDRC enhanced and validated its 3D device simulator for RHBD. Various CMOS structures were analyzedfor their tolerance to single-event latchup (SEL) on the basis of MRC experimental results. This sets a good foundation for Phase II, where the RHBD software will be enhanced with TID phenomena. Optimized designs of primitive logic and memory cells will befabricated and electrically characterized to demonstrate their radiation-hardness to TID, SEL, and SEU, and demonstrated on commercial and defense applications."