Application of a novel test system to characterize single-event transients at cryogenic temperatures

Abstract

Space missions involve environmental conditions with extremes of temperature and radiation. For example, Earth's moon has a minimum temperature of −233°C at permanently shadowed polar craters, while it reaches a peak temperature of 123°C in other places [1]. Since it has no atmosphere, there's no protection from solar flares and cosmic rays on moon's surface, thereby exposing space electronics to a substantial radiation environments that can induce many effects, including single event effects (SEEs). Therefore, ground-based SEE testing of space electronics that could potentially be exposed to the above type of environment becomes imperative. Work has been previously done in using auxiliary cryogenic stages with a heavy ion microbeam to measure the induced singe event transients (SETs) over temperature in p-i-n structures [2]. In addition, work has also been done using heavy-ion microbeam and laser to measure induced SETs on p-i-n structures and 180 nm CMOS devices respectively from RT to higher temperatures [3, 4]. However, these expansive setups are fixed and not portable. Limited or no data has been reported on cryogenic temperature heavy-ion broadbeam SEE testing over a wide range of temperatures.