A Single Event Transient Harden Structure for Flip-Flop with RC Filter

Abstract

With the feature size of CMOS technology scaling down, the IC chips is increasing every year which makes the Single Event Effect (SEE) severer in space application than before. Especially for high-frequency digital circuits, the Single Event Upset (SEU) and Single Event Transient (SET) effect could cause soft errors of data. Although dual interlocked storage cell (DICE) flip-flop has a good anti-radiation characteristic, with the frequency of circuits become higher, more soft errors appear due to Single Event Transient Effect. This paper proposed a new radiation harden structure which based on resistance-capacitance filtering for flip-flop, and we compared it with two other radiation hardened structures. The test chip was based on 0.18μm CMOS technology, and the radiation experiment was carried out in Innovative Center of Radiation Hardening Applied Technology in China Institute of Atomic Energy. The result showed the liner energy transfer (LET) of flip-flop with the new radiation harden structure is larger than 37 MeV•cm2/mg which means it could satisfied the requirements of space application.