Abstract

The radiation environment in space has severely adverse effects on electronic systems. To evaluate radiation sensitivity, electronics are tested on earth with different types of irradiation sources. Cosmic Rays (CR) are the most difficult to simulate on earth, because CR can have energies up to 10E20 eV, with a flux maximum around 1 GeV/nucleon. Traditionally these single-event effects of these particles were simulated with heavy ions having energies of only a few MeV/nucleon because for “large” devices only the energy loss (often referred to as LET) had to be matched. Heavy ions of such high energies can produce secondary particles through nuclear interactions which can induce additional ionization that leads to adverse effects. The need to investigate these effects has grown since electronic devices incorporate more and more heavier elements (e.g., Cu, W) close to sensitive elements which can have significantly larger nuclear cross sections than in the 1 to 10 MeV/nucleon energy regime. At the moment there is a large trend in the space community to increasingly use commercial of the shelf (COTS) electronic devices. One of the reasons is that many challenging space applications can only be met with COTS devices because there are simply no space qualified devices (often referred to as HiRel) available with the necessary performance. Another trend in the evolution of Si-based microelectronic integrated circuits is to create 3-dimensional structures. There are already commercially available 3D NAND-Flash devices with several tens of active layers stacked on top of each other. These structures cannot be tested with low energy ions, due to the large depths of the sensitive volumes alone. For radiation tests ion beams are needed that provide constant LET over the whole stack (> 128 layers). In addition, e.g. in systems in a package, you find several dies stacked on top of each in a single package. To investigate such afore mentioned device types, the beam has to be able to penetrate through all the dies.

Highlights

  • The radiation environment in space has severe adverse effects on humans, electronics, and materials

  • The singleevent upset (SEU) monitor is of older design, its character as a reference device, that was tested at most relevant accelerators for radiation effects in Europe and that was intensively simulated, makes it a must for any research on energy effects

  • SEL is an effect with an intrinsic high threshold

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Summary

INTRODUCTION

The radiation environment in space has severe adverse effects on humans, electronics, and materials. The new heavy ion synchrotron SIS-100 of the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) will extend this energy beyond 10 GeV/n. With both accelerators a very large part of the CR spectrum will be covered, opening unprecedented research possibilities. This review looks at the possibilities FAIR offers for research on the effects of galactic cosmic rays on space electronics typically used onboard satellites or future manned space missions. We conduct an analysis of the open issues in space radiation effects on electronics that would require high energy heavy ions. OPEN ISSUES CONCERNING THE EFFECTS OF GALACTIC COSMIC RAYS IN ELECTRONIC DEVICES. There are new technologies that cannot be tested with low energy ions due to the limited range of the ions

Introduction
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