Radiation Sensor Design for Mitigation of Total Ionizing Dose Effects

Abstract

The electrical breakdown of oxides and oxide/semiconductor interfaces is one of the major reasons for failure of CMOS ICs, especially when they are exposed to high stress conditions like the space environment and high energy laboratory, etc. To mitigate radiation effects and the circuit failures thereof, Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) and shielding are used at circuit and system levels which is costlier and puts burden on the system. This work recommends novel radiation sensor for minimizing radiation effects. Main objective of this work is to design a radiation sensor to overcome the degradation effects due to radiation. As 180 nm is considered as best node for space technology, this work aims at designing sensor for this node. The proposed system would be tested for effects of Gamma-ray and 10 KeV X-rays. Sensor parameters are fixed based on the mathematical and simulation results. Using Cogenda TCAD capacitor sensor is simulated having Silicon as substrate martial with Na doping of 1e $$^{16}$$ cm $$^{-3}$$ and Oxide thickness of 330 nm. Simulated and calculated threshold voltage is 3.9 V and 4.1 V respectively. Sensor tested with low and high radiation doses ranging from 100 rad to 10 Mrad. Threshold shift is considered as sensitivity parameter, sensitivity of sensor for 0–1 Mrad is 0.5 mV/krad.