Impact of thermal baking before radiation on the total dose response of bipolar device

Abstract

—The hardness assurance test methodology of electronic systems for ionizing radiation is usually based on the results of the total dose test on the device produced in the same batch. However, it ignores the influence of the manufacturing environment and storage of electronic systems before the system works in the radiation environment, such as the short thermal baking process. In this work, a commercial bipolar device showed enhanced degradation with short thermal baking before radiation. The degree of degradation was related to the baking time and temperature. The results, both experimentally and theoretically, showed that the thermal baking would release the hydrogen from the passivated layer and other places to the oxide layer, which leads to the increase of defects and dominates the radiation response of the device during the subsequent irradiation.