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Radiation hardening of power MOSFETs (metal oxide semiconductor field effect transistors) is of the highest priority for sustaining high-power systems in the space radiation environment. Silicon carbide (SiC)-based power electronics are being investigated as a strong alternative for high power spaceborne power electronic systems. SiC MOSFETs have been shown to be most prone to single-event burnout (SEB) from space radiation. The current knowledge of SiC MOSFET device degradation and failure mechanisms are reviewed in this paper. Additionally, the viability of radiation tolerant SiC MOSFET designs and the modeling methods of SEB phenomena are evaluated. A merit system is proposed to consider the performance of radiation tolerance and nominal electrical performance. Criteria needed for high-fidelity SEB simulations are also reviewed. This paper stands as a necessary analytical review to intercede the development of radiation-hardened power devices for space and extreme environment applications.

Single‐event transients (SETs) due to heavy‐ion (HI) strikes adversely affect the electronic circuits in the sub‐100 nm regime in the radiation environment. This study proposes techniques to mitigate SETs in CMOS voltage‐controlled oscillators (VCOs) without affecting the circuit specifications. A circuit asymmetry technique is used for faster recovery of the oscillator in the event of a single event transient (SET) caused by an ion hit. Also, a new SET tolerant inductor capacitor‐voltage controlled oscillator (LC‐VCO) topology is proposed for a radiation environment that shows reduced phase displacement, amplitude displacement, and recovery time. A comparison has been made with various LC‐VCOs that have an inherent rad‐hard capability which proves a significant improvement in SET sensitivity.

Conventional flip‐flops are more vulnerable to particle strikes in a radiation environment. To overcome this disadvantage, in the literature, many radiation‐hardened flip‐flops (FFs) based on techniques like triple modular redundancy, dual interlocked cell, Quatro and guard‐gated Quatro cell, and so on, are discussed. The flip‐flop realized using radiation hardened by design Quatro cell is named as the improved version of Quatro flip‐flop (IVQFF). Single event upset (SEU) at inverter stages of master/slave and at output are the two drawbacks of IVQFF. This study proposes a guard‐gated Quatro FF (GQFF) using guard‐gated Quatro cell and Muller C‐element. To overcome the SEU at inverter stages of IVQFF, in GQFF, the inverter stages are realized in a parallel fashion. A dual‐input Muller C‐element is connected to the GQFF output stage to mask the SEU and thus maintain the correct output. The proposed GQFF tolerates both single node upset (SNU) and double node upset (DNU). It also achieves low power. To prove the efficacy, GQFF and the existing FFs are implemented in 45 nm Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS) technology. From the simulation results, it may be noted that the GQFF is 100% immune to SNUs and 50% immune to DNUs.

Due to aggressive scaling down, multiple-node-upset hardened design has become a major concern regarding radiation hardening. The proposed latch overcomes the architecture and performance limitations of state-of-the-art double-node-upset (DNU)-resilient latches. A novel stacked latch element is developed with multiple thresholds, regular architecture, increased number of single-event upset (SEU)-insensitive nodes, low power dissipation, and high robustness. The radiation-aware layout considering layout-level issues is also proposed. Compared with state-of-the-art DNU-resilient latches, simulation results show that the proposed latch exhibits up to 92% delay and 80% power reduction in data activity ratio (DAR) of 100%. The radiation simulation using the dual-double exponential current source model shows that the proposed latch has the strongest radiation-hardening capability among the other DNU-resilient latches.

To mitigate the sensitivity of the charge pump in a traditional Phase-Locked Loop(PLL), a single-event-hardened PLL architecture with a proportional and integral path is proposed. The phase margin of the PLL is kept at 58.16° due to the rational design and the output clock frequency ranges from 0.8 to 3.2 GHz. The circuit-level simulation results reveal that the sensitive volume of the hardened PLL decreases by 80% ∼ 95%. The novel radiation-hardened PLL circuit was implemented in a 28 nm CMOS technology and irradiated with heavy ions with a linear energy transfer between 1.9 and 65.6 MeV•cm 2 mg −1 . The proposed radiation-hardened PLL shows one order of single-event effects hardness level higher than the conventional PLL.

In this paper, a soft-error-aware radiation-hardened 6T SRAM cell has been implemented using germanium-based dopingless tunnel FET (Ge DLTFET). In a circuit level simulation, the device-circuit co-design approach is used. Semiconductor devices are very prone to the radiation environment; hence, finding out the solution to the problem became a necessity for the designers. Single event upset (SEU), also known as soft error, is one of the most frequent issues to tackle in semiconductor devices. To mitigate the effect of soft error due to single-event upset, the radiation-hardening-by-design (RHBD) technique has been employed for Ge DLTFET-based SRAM cells. This technique uses RC feedback paths between the two cross-coupled inverters of an SRAM cell. The soft-error sensitivity is estimated for a conventional and RHBD-based SRAM cell design. It is found that the RHBD-based SRAM cell design is more efficient to mitigate the soft-error effect in comparison to the conventional design. The delay and stability parameters, obtained from the N-curve, of the Ge DLTFET-based SRAM cell performs better than the conventional Si TFET-based SRAM cell. There is an improvement of 305x & 850x in the static power noise margin and write trip power values of the Ge DLTFET SRAM cell with respect to the conventional Si TFET SRAM cell.

A mixed-signal spiking neural network (SNN) chip is presented, and its radiation effect-Total Ionizing Dose (TID) was studied. The chip was fabricated in a 180 nm silicon-on-insulator (SOI) integration process with an area of 3.75 mm2; the total doses were set at 300 krad (Si), 500 krad (Si), and 1 Mrad (Si). The TID radiation experimental results showed that the average spike frequency and spike amplitude of the output signal of the SNN circuit decreased after the irradiation because of the leakage current caused by the charge trapped in the buried oxide. Sensitive nodes were identified through the analysis of the critical path of the circuit, and guidance toward a radiation-hardening neuron circuit was proposed. The proposed circuit maintains good robustness with firing frequency variation.

Single Event Transients (SET) pose a growing challenge to reliability of memory circuits as the device dimensions continue to shrink. It is essential to assess the effect of decreasing technology lengths on the resilience and power dissipation of the circuit. This paper proposes Dual Interlocked Storage Cell (DICE) based Radiation Hardened by Design (RHBD) Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) circuit design with appropriate sizing ratios for 180 nm, 90 nm and 45 nm channel lengths. The effect of variation in voltage in these technology nodes is analysed by a comparison of power dissipation calculated through simulations on Cadence. For an input voltage of 1.1 V, the power dissipation is calculated as 0.175nW for 180 nm technology length, 0.086nW for 90 nm technology length and 0.018nW for 45 nm technology length. It shows that the power dissipation gets almost halved when the technology switch is made from 180 nm to 90 nm and the power dissipation decrease is almost ten times from 180 nm to 45 nm technology. Mobility and doping parameters are found to be varying with device dimensions and the magnitude of that variation is studied. The parameters are related with the vulnerability to SET and affect the circuit’s resilience to radiation.

In this paper, eight different SRAM cells are studied and evaluated with a 65nm CMOS technology. The cells were designed with radiation-hardening-by-design approaches including schematic and layout techniques. The eight types of cells were placed into eight pages of an SRAM test chip. The alpha and proton irradiation demonstrated that the Dual Interlocked Cell (DICE) has the best radiation-tolerant performance, but requires the largest area. The 6T and 11T cells designed with charge cancellation techniques can reduce soft errors up to 2-3 times with less area overhead. Several DICE variants were developed with reduced area overhead and showed SEU resilience performance equivalent to DICE. Simulation results are also presented in this paper to validate the findings.

A radiation-hardened instrumentation amplifier (IA) that allows precise measurement in radiation environments, including nuclear power plants, space environments, and radiation therapy rooms, was designed and manufactured, and its characteristics were verified. Most electronic systems are currently designed using silicon-based complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuits (ICs) to achieve a highly integrated low-power design. However, fixed charges induced in silicon by ionization radiation cause various negative effects, resulting in, for example, the generation of leakage current in circuits, performance degradation, and malfunction. Given that such problems in radiation environments may directly lead to a loss of life or environmental contamination, it is critical to implement radiation-hardened CMOS IC technology. In this study, an IA used to amplify fine signals of the sensors was designed and fabricated in the 0.18 μm CMOS bulk process. The IA contained sub-circuits that ensured the stable voltage supply needed to implement system-on-chip (SoC) solutions. It was also equipped with special radiation-hardening technology by applying an I-gate n-MOSFET that blocks the radiation-induced leakage currents. Its ICs were verified to provide the intended performance following a total cumulative dose of up to 25 kGy(Si), ensuring its safety in radiation environments.