Low-power Radiation Research Articles

Highly Stable Low Power Radiation Hardened Memory-by-Design SRAM for Space Applications

In space, due to high energy particles, which cause single event upsets (SEUs), the traditional 6T SRAM cell becomes more susceptible to soft-error. In order to address this, a radiation hardened memory-by-design 10T (RHMD10T) SRAM cell is proposed in this brief. The relative strength of RHMD10T is estimated by comparing it with other contemporary cells such as QUATRO10T, QUCCE10T, QUATRO12T, QUCCE12T, NS10T and PS10T over various major design metrics. RHMD10T exhibits 1.09×/ 1.16×/ 1.26× shorter read delay than QUCCE10T/ QUATRO10T/ NS10T. RHMD10T has the highest read stability and can tolerate the highest amount of critical charge than all other comparison cells. RHMD10T consumes the lowest hold power than all other comparison cells, except NS10T. In addition, RHMD10T is the least susceptible to SEU, except QUCCE12T. All these aforementioned improvements of RHMD10T are obtained at a cost of slightly longer write delay and lower write ability.

A distributed and interconnected network of sensors for environmental radiological monitoring

The W-MON project aims to improve and automatize the control of the presence of radioactive material in conventional waste containers at CERN using a distributed network of interconnected low-power radiation sensors. The key development is the integration of a lightweight but sensitive radiation sensor in a powerful network that allows continuous data recording, transfer and storage in a database for alarm triggering and subsequent data analysis. The Chiyoda D-shuttle personal dosimeter was used as proof-of-concept. Extensive tests performed with the commercial version of the D-shuttle showed that its robustness, stability under variable thermal conditions, high sensitivity and hourly dose logging capabilities make it a strong candidate for the project. To comply with the requirements of remote operation and wireless data transmission to a central server, a customized version of the D-shuttle has been developed. Two additional radiation sensors are also currently being considered. The sensors have been coupled to a custom-made communication board allowing for long-range low-power LoRa wireless data transmission. A centralized IoT (Internet of Things) end-to-end data architecture has been developed for real-time monitoring and visualization of the radiation level in waste containers before the final integration into REMUS, the overall CERN Radiation and Environment Monitoring Unified Supervision service.

Effects of microwave irradiation and seeding on low-temperature size-controlled nanozeolite P synthesis

Synthetic nanozeolites compared to natural ones are very important mainly due to their particular physic-chemical characteristics, industrial capabilities and high degree of purity. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the synthesis of nanozeolite P using an organic template of benzyl dimethylphenyl ammonium bromide. The research provide new insights into the most influential size controlling the synthetic parameters of zeolite P including time and power of the microwave radiation, seeding, low-temperature gel aging as well as conventional hydrothermal time. The results favorably revealed that the application of low-power microwave radiation and seeding methods played crucial roles in controlling the particle size of zeolite P and decreasing the synthesis time of these nanoparticles.

A Low-Power, Highly Integrated Radiation Detection System for Portable, Long-Duration Monitoring

This paper presents the signal processing and power supply electronics for a radiation detection system designed for use in portable and long-duration radiation monitoring applications. The tested system achieves state-of-the-art low power consumption, requiring 2.4 mW, including detector powering, when detecting radiation at 1000 counts per second (cps). It contains two separate chip designs that are optimized for low-power and low-noise operation. First, a $0.13~\mu \text{m}$ multichannel analyzer (MCA) chip measures, processes, and stores sensor data to build a radiation spectrum. Second, a $0.35~\mu \text{m}$ controller chip drives the detector power supply (DPS) circuitry, generating the high voltages required to power standard radiation detectors. The chips were fabricated, tested, and interfaced to a scintillation-based detector to forma complete, low-power radiation detection system that can operate for over 30 days when powered from a CR2477 button cell battery.

AFM Imaging of Protein Aggregation in Studying the Impact of Knotted Electromagnetic Field on A Peroxidase

The phenomenon of knotted electromagnetic field (KEMF) is now actively studied, as such fields are characterized by a nontrivial topology. The research in this field is mainly aimed at technical applications – for instance, the development of efficient communication systems. Until present, however, the influence of KEMF on biological objects (including enzyme systems) was not considered. Herein, we have studied the influence of KEMF on the aggregation and enzymatic activity of a protein with the example of horseradish peroxidase (HRP). The test HRP solution was irradiated in KEMF (the radiation power density was 10−12 W/cm2 at 2.3 GHz frequency) for 40 min. After the irradiation, the aggregation of HRP was examined by atomic force microscopy (AFM) at the single-molecule level. The enzymatic activity was monitored by conventional spectrophotometry. It has been demonstrated that an increased aggregation of HRP, adsorbed on the AFM substrate surface, was observed after irradiation of the protein sample in KEMF with low (10−12 W/cm2) radiation power density; at the same time, the enzymatic activity remained unchanged. The results obtained herein can be used in the development of models describing the interaction of enzymes with electromagnetic field. The obtained data can also be of importance considering possible pathological factors that can take place upon the influence of KEMF on biological objects— for instance, changes in hemodynamics due to increased protein aggregation are possible; the functionality of protein complexes can also be affected by aggregation of their protein subunits. These effects should also be taken into account in the development of novel highly sensitive systems for human serological diagnostics of breast cancer, prostate cancer, brain cancer and other oncological pathologies, and for diagnostics of diseases in animals, and crops.

МЕТОД ЗАБЕЗПЕЧЕННЯ ЗАВАДОСТІЙКОСТІ РУХОМОГО ЗВ’ЯЗКУ ПРИ ВИНИКНЕННІ ВНУТРІШНЬОСИСТЕМНИХ ЗАВАД

Предметом вивчення є процеси забезпечення безпроводової завадостійкої передачі дискретної інформації на грунті надширокосмугових сигналів з високою інформаційною ємністю. Мета – розробка рекомендацій щодо забезпечення електромагнітної сумісності надширокосмугової системи зв’язку при передачі дискретних повідомлень каналом зв’язку з аддитивним гаусовим шумом. Задача – забезпечення усталеної та надійної роботи надширокосмугової системи зв’язку в умовах внутрішньосистемних завад. Використані методи: методи аналітичного, імітаційного моделювання та цифрового кодування сигналів. Отримані наступні результати. Показано, що випадкові зміни енергії та автокореляційної функції прийнятих надширокосмугових сигналів в потоці бітів інформації є причиною виникнення внутрішньосистемних завад. У свою чергу це викликає збільшення бітової похибки та деградацію імовірнісних характеристик системи зв’язку. Отримані характеристики бітової похибки свідчать про високий рівень прихованості та електромагнітної сумісності надширокосмугової системи зв’язку при передачі дискретних повідомлень в каналі зв’язку з адитивним гаусовом білим шумом. Причому, за умов використання некратних затримок кодуючих імпульсів в процесі кодової спектральної модуляції, отримуємо імовірність бітової похибки на рівні 10(-5) – 10(-6) при суттєво менших одиниці відношеннях сигнал/шум. Висновки. Використання технології надширокосмугових сигналів дозволяє здійснити безпроводову приховану передачу інформації з малою потужністю випромінювання на швидкості 1-2 Мб/с з імовірністю похибки на біт менш, ніж 10 . Таким чином система надширокосмугового радіозв’язку з кодовою модуляцією в передавачі та спектральною обробкою в приймачі має високу завадостійкість, що дозволяє здійснювати надійну передачу цифрової інформації при появі внутрішньосистемних завад

Terahertz Frequency Comb in Graphene Field-Effect Transistors

Graphene Field-effect transistors (GFETs) are excellent candidates for all-electric, low-power radiation sources and detectors based on integrated circuit technology. In this work, we show that a hydrodynamic instability can be ex¬plored (the Dyakonov–Shur instability) to excite the graphene plasmons. The instability can be sustained with the help of a source-to-drain current and con¬trolled with the gate voltage. It is shown that the plasmons radiate a frequency comb in the Terahertz (THz) range. It is argued how this can pave the stage for a new generation of low power THz sources in integrated-circuit technology.

High data-rate readout logic design of a 512 × 1024 pixel array dedicated for CEPC vertex detector

CMOS Pixel Sensors (CPS) are attractive for CEPC vertex detector construction due to its high granularity, high speed, low material budgets, low power and potential high radiation tolerance. The characteristics of the sensing diode and the readout architecture were studied using several chips with small-scaled pixel array for CEPC vertex detector. This paper will study the design of a high data-rate readout logic design of a 512 × 1024 pixel array. For the innermost layer of CEPC vertex detector, the hit pixel frequency is near 120 MHz, which is several times higher than the design requirements of ALPIDE for ALICE vertex detector. Based on the hit-driven readout scheme in the pixel array of ALPIDE and FEI3, we propose a new peripheral readout logic design. All the double columns of pixels are read out in parallel and a fast readout architecrue of 512 double columns is realized. Meanwhile, a real-time data compression and a trigger-mode operation are supported to reduce the data output. The simulation results indicate the pixel hit frequency in average of 120 MHz can be processed with readout time of 50 ns per pixel and of less than 500 ns per double column of pixels. The layout area is 25.68 × 1.13 mm2. The power density in trigger mode and in triggerless mode are estimated as 25 ∼ 30 mW/cm2 and 35 ∼ 45 mW/cm2 respectively.

Low power radiation aware transistor level design using tri‐state inverter embedded non‐clock gating technique

The effect of radiation on digital circuits in particularly complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology has been known since many years. The two most important radiation effects are total ionisation dose and single-event effects (SEEs). The complexity of circuit will increase depends on the number of gate inputs, which degrades the radiation to accelerate the total dose levels. The incremental dose level affects the circuit parameter failure, which affects the functionality of logic design. Many authors focus to reduce radiation effects with avoid function loss, but those extra efforts consume more power. In this study, a low power radiation aware circuit design is proposed. First, the physics-based modelling approach is used for compute radiation response of each component in the circuit. Tri-state inverter embedded non-clocked gating technique is proposed to eliminate unwanted latches and disables the inverter chain when the input data are kept unchanged, so redundant transitions of delayed clock signals. For simulation purpose, the authors applied their proposed technique in flip–flops and make it as more aware of radiation effects and power consumption. The performance of the proposed circuit design is analysed at 16 nm CMOS predictive technology model in terms of power delay product using HSPICE tool.

Selective hybrid spin interactions with low radiation power

We present a protocol for designing appropriately extended $\pi$ pulses that achieves tunable, thus selective, electron-nuclear spin interactions with low-driving radiation power. Our method is general since it can be applied to different quantum sensor devices such as nitrogen vacancy centers or silicon vacancy centers. Furthermore, it can be directly incorporated in commonly used stroboscopic dynamical decoupling techniques to achieve enhanced nuclear selectivity and control, which demonstrates its flexibility.

Integrated power exhaust modelling for DEMO with lithium divertor

A DEMO reactor with a liquid lithium divertor setup is considered. The simulation is performed for EU DEMO 2018 configuration using COREDIV code which self-consistently solves core and scrape-off layer transport equations for plasma and impurity. Influence of the sputtering, prompt redeposition and evaporation of the liquid lithium divertor was taken into account. Two operation regimes were identified. In the first regime evaporation rate is suppressed by the cooling system and is of the order of the sputtering rate. Scrape-off layer plasma characterises with low radiation and high total power to the plates. In the second regime the evaporation rate is much higher than the sputtering rate. High Li influx reduces temperature in the divertor region. Lithium radiation is increased reducing power to the plates. Plasma parameters in the core are comparable for the two regimes and the fusion gain parameter Q drops only slightly. Both regimes characterise with high plasma dilution. Power across the separatrix stays above the L-H threshold.

Src kinase controls signaling pathways in sensory neuron triggered by low-power infrared radiation.

Low-power (non-thermal) infrared (IR) radiation with the wavelength of 10.6 μm activates the Na,K-ATPase transducer function in sensory neurons, which is manifested in decrease of NaV1.8 channel voltage sensitivity at the cellular membrane level and in inhibition of growth of chick embryo dorsal root ganglia neurites at the tissue level. It is shown that the effect of low-power IR radiation is totally blocked by a specific Src kinase inhibitor, PP2. Upon irradiation on the background of PP2, the effective charge of NaV1.8 channel activation gating system does not differ from its control value in patch-clamp experiments, and the area index of sensory ganglia neurites growth remains unchanged as compared with the control in organotypic tissue culture. The data obtained demonstrate that Src kinase is involved in intracellular signaling pathways triggered by CO2 laser low-power IR radiation by the transducer-activated mechanism. This is the first indication that in primary sensory neuron the signals of low-power IR radiation are sensed, amplified, and transduced by the Na,K-ATPase/Src complex and not by G proteins.

Nanostructure-Enhanced Photoconductive Terahertz Emission and Detection.

Photoconductive antennas are commonly used for terahertz wave generation and detection. However, their relatively low radiation power and detection sensitivity often place limitations on the signal-to-noise ratio and operation bandwidth of terahertz imaging and spectroscopy systems. Several different techniques are attempted to address these limitations. The most promising ones take advantage of the unique tools provided by nanotechnology. In this review, the recent nanotechnology-enabled advances in photoconductive antennas, which use nanostructures, such as optical nanoantennas, plasmonic structures, and optical nanocavities, to increase the interaction of the optical pump beam with the photoconductive semiconductor, are discussed. All of these techniques are experimentally demonstrated to be efficient tools for enhancing the performance of photoconductive antennas for terahertz wave generation and detection.

ОЦЕНКА ЭФФЕКТИВНОСТИ ЭКСТРАКТА HALOCYNTHIA AURANTIUM ПРИ ЭКСПЕРИМЕНТАЛЬНОМ ЛУЧЕВОМ ПОРАЖЕНИИ

Проведено исследование лечебного эффекта экстракта из морского гидробионта Halocynthia aurantium при радиационном воздействии. Экстракт асцидии (ЭА) содержит комплекс биологически активных веществ и обладает способностью повышать неспецифическую резистентность организма к действию ряда экстремальных повреждающих факторов.Объектом исследования являлись мыши BALB/с подвергнутые γ-облучению излучением малой мощности.Цель работы состояла в оценке лечебного влияния ЭА на пострадиационную динамику показателей периферической крови и клеточность костного мозга (доза 5 Гр) и на исход радиационного поражения (доза 13 Гр). ЭА животные получали ежедневно в течение всего эксперимента, начиная в день окончания облучения.Методика взятия материала и анализ элементов периферической крови и костного мозга стандартная. Показано, что в ранние сроки после облучения наблюдалось резкое снижение общего числа лейкоцитов периферической крови и ядросодержащих клеток в костном мозге. Ежедневное применение ЭА способствовало ускорению восстановления клеточного состава костного мозга и увеличению общего числа лейкоцитов и тромбоцитов в периферической крови.Можно заключить, что применение ЭА после радиационного воздействия позволило существенно повысить вероятность благоприятного исхода острой лучевой болезни при дозе облучения 5 Гр и облегчить ее течение.

MemSens: Memristor-Based Radiation Sensor

Resistive random-access memory (RRAM) technology has been gaining importance due to scalability, low power, non-volatility, and the ability to perform in-memory computing. The RRAM sensing applications have also emerged to enable single RRAM technology platforms which include sensing, data storage, and computing. This paper reports on sol-gel drop coated low-power <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula> -thick Ag/TiO <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sub> /Cu memristor, named MemSens, developed for radiation sensing. MemSens exhibits a bipolar memristive switching behavior within a small voltage window, ranging up to +0.7 V for the turn-ON, and down to −0.2 V for the turn-OFF. Under these operating conditions, MemSens has 67% less switching voltage, 20% drop in ON switching current, 75% reduced active area and > 3x improved device endurance, compared to the best characteristics reported in the literature for <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\mu $ </tex-math></inline-formula> -thick memristors. The device is tested under direct exposure to ionizing Cs-137 662keV <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\gamma $ </tex-math></inline-formula> -rays, during which a significant increase in the electrical conductivity of the device is observed. MemSens circuit is proposed to allow a relatively real time and cost-effective radiation detection. This provides a first insight to the advancement of reliable memristors that could potentially be deployed in future low-power radiation sensing technologies for medical, personal protection, and other field applications.

A novel highly reliable and low-power radiation hardened SRAM bit-cell design

In this paper, an improved SEU hardened SRAM bit-cell, based on the SEU physics mechanism and reasonable circuit-design, is proposed. The proposed SRAM cell can offer differential read operation for robust sensing. By using 90 nm standard digital CMOS technology, the simulation results show that the SRAM cell can provide full immunity for single node upset and multiple-node upset. And its critical charge is 25 times compared with Quatro10T. Besides, by comparing several electrical parameters, the proposed SRAM cell has the highly reliable and low-power capability for severe radiation environment application.

Experimental investigation of polarization-imbalanced nonlinear loop mirror with double-sense twisted fiber as a filter to clean up solitons

In the present work, we report the implementation of a novel polarization-imbalanced NOLM for soliton cleaning. The NOLM consists of a nearly symmetrical coupler with a 51/49 coupling ratio, and the fiber loop which, in contrast to previously reported results, consists of two 100 m pieces of fibers twisted in opposite directions. The use of the symmetrical coupler and two fiber spans twisted in opposite direction allowed a transmission of low-power radiation of 0.5 × 10−3 in the wavelength range of 1520–1560 nm. The maximum transmission at high power was 45% providing 30 dB contrast between high and low power transmission. We show more than 20 dB suppression of Kelley’s side bands of 0.6 ps pulses from the output of the fiber mode-locked laser. The experimental results are supported by the numerical simulation and show that cleanup of solitons is possible using a NOLM as intensity filter without dependence of wavelength.

Optimal and Suboptimal Resource Sharing Schemes for Underlaid D2D Communications

Being attracted by offloading local services to adjacent users, the operator allows two proximity users to build up a direct communication link, which is a new supplementary to current cellular network and called device-to-device (D2D) communication. Due to the low power radiation and occupation of the licensed band, D2D users can share the resource with cellular users fully controlled by cellular network to improve the local frequency efficiency. Due to the combinatorial and nonconvex nature of formulated problem, solving such problem optimally is a nearly impossible task. However, we propose an upper bound computation method, which can be seen as a benchmark for resource sharing scheme design. We also propose another two suboptimal schemes, i.e., suboptimal resource sharing scheme I with parallel computation structure which can achieve optimality in the most cases, and suboptimal resource sharing scheme II with relatively low complexity at the cost of acceptable performance loss. Moreover, through extensive numerical results, we find that both suboptimal resource sharing schemes can outperform the existed works. To conclude, our work actually provide a tradeoff between complexity and performance.

LCC Resonant Multilevel Converter for X-ray Applications

Medical X-ray appliances use high-voltage power supplies that must be able to work with very different energy requirements. Two techniques can be distinguished in X-ray medical imaging: fluoroscopy and radioscopy. The former involves low power radiation with a long exposure time, while radioscopy requires large power during short radiographic exposure times. Since the converter has to be designed by taking into account the maximum power specification, it will exhibit a poor efficiency when operating at low power levels. Such a problem can be solved by using a new multilevel LCC topology. This topology is based on a classical series-parallel resonant topology, but includes an additional low-voltage auxiliary transformer whose function depends on the X-ray technique considered. When radioscopy operation is selected, the transformer will allow the power to be shared between two full-bridges. If fluoroscopy mode is activated, the auxiliary full bridge is disconnected and the magnetizing inductance of the auxiliary transformer is used to increase the resonant inductor in order to reduce the resonant currents, thus improving the efficiency of the converter.

Design and construction of portable survey meter

This work was aimed to design and construction of portable survey meter for radiation dose measuring. The designed system consists of 4 main parts consisting of low voltage power supply, radiation detection, radiation measurement and data display part on android phone. The test results show that the ripple voltage of low voltage power supply is less than 1%, the maximum integral counts are found to be 104 counts per second and the maximum distance of wireless commination between the server and the client is about 10 meter. It was found that the developed system had small size and light weight for portable instrument.