Single Event Effects Research Articles

Effect of heavy ion radiation on low frequency noise characteristics of AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors

AlGaN/GaN high election mobility transistor (HEMT) has important application prospects in satellite communication, radar, nuclear reactors and other extreme environments, owing to its excellent electrical performance and strong radiation resistance. Heavy ion radiation mainly causes single-event effect and displacement damage effect in AlGaN/GaN HEMT device. In this work, the displacement damage defects introduced by heavy ion radiation are analyzed in detail. With the increase of heavy ion radiation influence, more defects are introduced by displacement damage. These defects reduce the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) concentration through carrier capture and removal effect, and reduce the carrier mobility through scattering mechanism, resulting in gradual degradation of the electrical characteristics of the device. In this work, AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors are irradiated by <sup>181</sup>Ta<sup>32+</sup> ions with fluences of 1×10<sup>8</sup> ions/cm<sup>2</sup>, 1×10<sup>9</sup> ions/cm<sup>2</sup> and 1×10<sup>10</sup> ions/cm<sup>2</sup>. The electrical characteristics, EMMI and low-frequency noise characteristics of the device before and after heavy ion radiation are measured. The results show that heavy ion radiation can lead to the degradation of electrical parameters. When the heavy ion radiation dose reaches 1×10<sup>10</sup> ions/cm<sup>2</sup>, the electrical characteristics of the device deteriorate seriously, the threshold voltage shifts forward by 25%, and the drain saturation current deteriorates obviously. The defect locations introduced by irradiation are analyzed by EMMI test, and it is found that the number of “hot spots” increases significantly after the having been irradiated by heavy ions with a fluence of 1×10<sup>10</sup> ions/cm<sup>2</sup>, indicating that the radiation leads to the increase of defect density and serious damage to the device. Through the noise test, it is found that with the increase of the radiation fluence, the current noise power spectral density gradually increases. When the fluence reaches 1×10<sup>10</sup> ions/cm<sup>2</sup>, the defect density increases to 3.19×10<sup>18</sup> cm<sup>–3</sup>·eV<sup>–1</sup>, and the Hooge parameter increases after having been irradiated by heavy ions. We believe that the radiation leads to the defect density and parasitic series resistance of AlGaN/GaN HEMT device to increases, resulting in larger Hooge parameters. Through analyzing the variation of the normalized power spectral density of the drain current noise with bias voltage, it is found that the defects caused by heavy ion radiation will cause the parasitic series resistance to increase.

Proposal of a Multi-Scale High Accuracy Engineering approach for Single Event Effects Analysis in Modern Technologies

Proposal of a Multi-Scale High Accuracy Engineering approach for Single Event Effects Analysis in Modern Technologies

Heavy ion single event effect in double-trench SiC metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors

In this paper, experiments on 208 MeV Ge ion irradiation with different source-drain bias voltages are carried out for the double-trench SiC metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistors, and the physical mechanism of the single event effect is analyzed. The experimental results show that the drain leakage current of the device increases more obviously with the increase of the initial bias voltage during irradiation. When the bias voltage is 400 V during irradiation, the device has a single event burned at a fluence of 9×10<sup>4</sup> ion/cm<sup>2</sup>, and when the bias voltage is 500 V, the device has a single event burned at a fluence of 3×10<sup>4</sup> ion/cm<sup>2</sup>, so when the LET value is 37.3 MeV·cm<sup>2</sup>/mg, the SEB threshold of DUT does not exceed 400 V, which is lower than 34 % of the rated operational voltage. The post gate-characteristics test results show that the leakage current of the device with a bias voltage of 100 V does not change significantly during irradiation. When the bias voltage is 200 V, the gate leakage and the drain leakage of the device both increase, so do they when the bias voltage is 300 V, which is positively related to bias voltage. In order to further analyze the single particle effect mechanism of device, the simulation is conducted by using TCAD tool. The simulation results show that at low bias voltage, the heavy ion incident device generates electron-hole pairs, the electrons are quickly swept out, and the holes accumulate at the gate oxygen corner under the effect of the electric field, which combines the source-drain bias voltage, leading to the formation of leakage current channels in the gate oxygen layer. The simulation results also show that at high bias voltage, the electrons generated by the incident heavy ion move towards the junction of the N<sup>–</sup> drift layer and the N<sup>+</sup> substrate under the effect of the electric field, which further increases the electric field strength and causes significant impact ionization. The local high current density generated by the impact ionization and the load large electric field causes the lattice temperature to exceed the melting point of silicon carbide, causing single event burnout. This work provides a reference and support for studying the radiation effect mechanism and putting silicon carbide power devices into aerospace applications.

Characterization of Fragmented Ultra-high Energy Heavy Ion Beam and its Effects on Electronics Single Event Effect Testing

Characterization of Fragmented Ultra-high Energy Heavy Ion Beam and its Effects on Electronics Single Event Effect Testing

Single Event Effects of Low-Voltage N-type and P-type Trench-gate MOSFET Devices

Single Event Effects of Low-Voltage N-type and P-type Trench-gate MOSFET Devices

Multiturn Injection Design and Optimization for XiPAF-Upgrading Synchrotron

XiPAF (Xi’an 200MeV proton application Facility) synchrotron is using H- stripping injection and phase space painting scheme. With the demand of more particle species for single event effect study, XiPAF synchrotron has been upgraded to multiturn injection from stripping injection, the injection system must be redesigned. This paper report XiPAF-Upgrading synchrotron multiturn injection scheme, simulation results by PyORBIT[1] show that the injection efficiency is ∼85% for proton and ∼80% for heavy ions. The influence of space charge and magnet errors on accumulated particle number has been studied by simulation.

Multiscale, Multiphysics Modeling and Simulation of Single-Event Effects in Digital Electronics: From Particles to Systems

Multiscale, Multiphysics Modeling and Simulation of Single-Event Effects in Digital Electronics: From Particles to Systems

Improving Single-Event Effect Performance of SiC MOSFET by Excess Hole Extraction

Improving Single-Event Effect Performance of SiC MOSFET by Excess Hole Extraction

Circuit-level design of radiation tolerant memory cell

As transistors shrink in size, the integration density of memory circuits like Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) cells rises, making them increasingly susceptible to Single Event Effects (SEE). In the space environment, memory circuits face stability and reliability challenges due to the presence of various charged particles such as α-particles, neutrons, electrons, heavy ions, and photons. These high-energy particles create ion tracks when they strike the memory device, leading to upsets in the storage bits. Conventional 6 T SRAM cells are susceptible to these upsets. As a solution this paper proposes a new Radiation Tolerable (RT 13 T) SRAM cell that is better suited for deep-space applications compared to other memory cell. RT13T has been validated to withstand radiation hazards through Critical Charge (QCrit) analysis, which shows that it exhibits 1.17×, 1.1×, 1.94× and 1.06× highest QCritthan QUCCE 10 T/12 T,traditional 6 T and LIOR 13 T memory cells, respectively. As the comparison made, our Proposed RT 13 T saved by5.1 %,9.9 %, 20.1 % and 7 % of the power consumption compared to QUCCE10T/12 T/LIOR 13 T/SERSC-16 T SRAM cells at a nominal supply voltage of 0.7 V. It also exhibits shorter read delay (TRA) 10.6 %, 1.34 %, 9.6 %, 22.16 %compared to QUCCE 10 T/12 T,6T, SERSC-16Tmemory cells, respectively. In terms of stability,our proposed RT13T SRAM cell exhibits 2.32×/2.05×/2.9×/1.05×/1.01 × higher read stability as compared with QUCCE10T/12 T/6T/LIOR 13 T/SERSC-16 T memory cells during the read operation. The our proposed RT13T shows improvements in design metrics are at the expense of a longer write delay. To characterize the performances of the proposed RT13T, 16-nm CMOS predictive technology model and validated through extensive simulation with licensed PrimeSim HSPICE of Synopsys. The results of our proposed RT13T cell are compared with some other previously proposed memory cells such as 6 T, QUCCE 10 T, QUCCE 12 T, LIOR 13 T and SERSC-16 T memory cells. The obtained results are tabulated and plotted for graphical analysis. In terms of area consumption our proposed 13 T consumes 0.9×/0.6 × lesser area than QUCCE 12 T/SERSC-16 T memory cells but our proposed circuit consumes 3.1×/1.08×/1.05 × more area than QUCCE10T/conventional 6 T/LIOR 13 T because QUCCE10T and 6 T consist of less number of transistors in memory cells.The cell proposed in this paper demonstrates strong radiation-hardened capabilities and excellent overall performance, making it well-suited for aerospace electronic devices and ensuring stable operation in space radiation environments.

Characteristics of secondary ions and their impact on single-event upset in TMD devices under proton irradiation

Transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) materials are emerging candidates for next-generation electronics due to their unique properties, such as high carrier mobility and on/off ratios. However, their introduction may significantly alter single-event effects (SEEs) in devices compared to traditional silicon devices. This work investigates the SEE sensitivity of TMD devices under proton irradiation using the Geant4 simulation toolkit. Secondary ions generated by proton irradiation of TMD devices with different proton energies were simulated and analyzed. The energy deposition in the device's sensitive volume array was also examined. The results show that TMD devices are more susceptible to SEEs than silicon devices, and that their SEE sensitivity depends on the TMD material, proton energy, and critical charge. These findings provide valuable insights into the aerospace application of TMD material devices and the design of radiation-hardened TMD-based electronics.

Evaluation of Single Event Upset on a Relay Protection Device

Traditionally, studies have primarily focused on single event effects in aerospace electronics. However, current research has confirmed that atmospheric neutrons can also induce single event effects in China’s advanced technology relay protection devices. Spallation neutron irradiation tests on a Loongson 2K1000 system-on-chip based relay protection device have revealed soft errors, including abnormal sampling, refusal of operation and interlock in the relay protection device. Given the absence of standardized evaluation methods for single event effects on relay protection devices, the following research emphasizes the use of Monte Carlo simulation and software fault injection. Various types of single event upsets, such as single bit upsets, dual bit upsets, and even eight bit upsets, were observed in Monte Carlo simulations where atmospheric neutrons hit the chip from different directions (top and bottom). The simulation results indicated that the single event effect sensitivity of the relay protection device was similar whether the neutron hit from the top or the bottom. Through software fault injection, the study also identified soft errors caused by neutron induced single event upsets on the Loongson 2K1000 system, including failure to execute, system halt, time out, and error result. And the soft error number of system halts and error results exceeded that of time outs and failures to execute in all three tested programs. This research represents a preliminary assessment of single event effects on relay protection devices and is expected to provide valuable insights for evaluating the reliability of advanced technology relay protection devices.

Study of Single-Event Effects Influenced by Displacement Damage Effects under Proton Irradiation in Static Random-Access Memory

Static random-access memory (SRAM), a pivotal component in integrated circuits, finds extensive applications and remains a focal point in the global research on single-event effects (SEEs). Prolonged exposure to irradiation, particularly the displacement damage effect (DD) induced by high-energy protons, poses a substantial threat to the performance of electronic devices. Additionally, the impact of proton displacement damage effects on the performance of a six-transistor SRAM with an asymmetric structure is not well understood. In this paper, we conducted an analysis of the impact and regularities of DD on the upset cross-sections of SRAM and simulated the single-event upset (SEU) characteristics of SRAM using the Monte Carlo method. The research findings reveal an overall increasing trend in upset cross-sections with the augmentation of proton energy. Notably, the effect of proton irradiation on the SEU cross-section is related to the storage state of SRAM. Due to the asymmetry in the distribution of sensitive regions during the storage of “0” and “1”, the impact of DD in the two initial states is not uniform. These findings can be used to identify the causes of SEU in memory devices.

Design of soft error correction flip-flop cells for highly reliable applications

With the development of technology, the vulnerability of integrated circuits to Single Event Effect (SEE) increases, and the sensitivity of flip-flops to soft errors induced by Single Event Transient (SET) and Single Event Upset (SEU) increases. Fault tolerant design is necessary for high reliability applications. In this work, a Soft Error Correction Flip-Flop 1(SEC FF1) is proposed, which can correct soft errors induced by SET and SEU at low clock phase without additional clock cycle. It has the lowest area and power consumption overhead and the lowest Power-Delay Product (PDP) compared with other radiation hardened flip-flops. In order to correct soft errors earlier, a variant of SEC FF1, SECFF2, is proposed at the cost of power consumption and switching delay. As the feature size of transistors shrinks, Double Node Upset (DNU) induced by single-event charge sharing is becoming an emerging reliability challenge. In order tolerate DNU, variant of SEC FFs, DNU Correction (DNUC) FFs, are proposed. In addition, the delay element used in the radiation-hardened flip-flops is also introduced.

Total ionizing dose and single event effect response of 22 nm ultra-thin body and buried oxide fully depleted silicon-on-insulator technology

The test chip including transistors and Static Random Access Memory (SRAM) is proposed and fabricated by an advanced 22 nm Ultra-Thin Body and Buried Oxide Fully Depleted Silicon-on-Insulator (UTBB FD-SOI) technology. Experimental results of Co-60 irradiation and heavy ion experiments are presented. Total Ionizing Dose (TID) experiment results show that the threshold voltage shift of the transistor is about 100 mV when the dose is 500 krad(Si) and the SRAM irradiated to a dose of at least 300 krad(Si) can maintain its functionality, which means that 22 nm UTBB FD-SOI devices exhibit significantly improved total dose tolerance performance compared to the previous generation process. TID-induced threshold voltage shift in conventional-well nMOSFET can be mitigated by applying biasing to back-gate, while back-gate biasing is invalid for TID mitigation of the conventional-well pMOSFET. Heavy ion experimental results make known that 22 nm UTBB FD-SOI technology has contributions to Single Event Effect (SEE) hardness and the hardened SRAM has higher single event upset (SEU) tolerance and even SEU immunity. The research indicates that the circuits manufactured by 22 nm UTBB FD-SOI technology have great potential space applications in harsh radiation environments.

Characterization of Single Event Effect in a Radiation Hardened Programmable Read-Only Memory in a 130 nm Bulk CMOS Technology

The concept of memory that can only be read but cannot be changed seems strange at first. In reality, it is found that it has great application potential, such as the processor with a fixed purpose, the initial set value of the microprocessor BIOS, and these data are stored in Programmable Read-Only Memory (PROM) to quickly realize system functions. The PROM storage content is fixed, greatly simplifying his design. The radiation of space particles is the main factor causing the failure of the electronic system of spacecraft. The PROM storage array of the space electronic system is the most basic guarantee for the normal operation of the electronic system. The chip adopts domestic 130 nm standard technology of Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor (CMOS), Muller-C digital filter is used in the peripheral subsystem of PROM storage array, and the core cell uses Dual Interlocked Cell (DICE) and ring gate and other radiation hardening technologies to design a 32Kx8bit radiation resistant asynchronous programmable PROM. Pre-silicon of devices was verified by Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD), and post silicon radiation verification was completed through radiation experiment. The post silicon radiation experiment showed that the total ionizing Dose (TID) capacity of the PROM chip was ≥100 Krad (Si), the critical value of single event upset (SEU) was ≥37.1 MeV·cm2/mg, the critical value of single event latch up was ≥98 MeV·cm2/mg, meeting the life requirements of the initial value storage of aerospace electronic systems. These performances ensure the reliable operation of the space electronic system after restart.

Characterization and Simulation of Terrestrial Neutron-Induced Destructive Single-Event Effects in Gallium Nitride (GaN) Power Devices

Characterization and Simulation of Terrestrial Neutron-Induced Destructive Single-Event Effects in Gallium Nitride (GaN) Power Devices

Basic Mechanisms of Single-Event Occurrence in Silicon Carbide Semiconductor under Terrestrial Atmospheric Neutron Irradiation

This numerical simulation work investigates the basic physical mechanisms of single events induced in a target layer composed of silicon carbide exposed to natural radiation with atmospheric neutrons at the terrestrial level. Using direct calculations and extensive Geant4 simulations, this study provides an accurate investigation in terms of nuclear processes, recoil products, secondary ion production and fragment energy distributions. In addition, the thorough analysis includes a comparison between the responses to neutron irradiation of silicon carbide, carbon (diamond) and silicon targets. Finally, the consequences of these interactions in terms of the generation of electron–hole pairs, which is a fundamental mechanism underlying single-event transient effects at the device or circuit level, are discussed in detail.

Refined Analysis of Leakage Current in SiC Power Metal Oxide Semiconductor Field Effect Transistors after Heavy Ion Irradiation

A leakage current is the most critical parameter to characterize heavy ion radiation damage in SiC MOSFETs. An accurate and refined analysis of the source and generation process of a leakage current is the key to revealing the failure mechanism. Therefore, this article finely tests the online and post-irradiation leakage changes and leakage pathways of SiC MOSFETs caused by heavy ion irradiation, analyzes the damaged location of the device in reverse, and discusses the mechanism of leakage generation. The experimental results further confirm that an increase in the leakage current of a device during heavy ion irradiation is positively correlated with the applied voltage of the drain, but the leakage path is not direct from the drain to the source. The experimental analysis of the source of the leakage current of the device after irradiation indicates that there is also a leakage current path between the device gate and source. The research results suggest that the experimental sample is more prone to a single-event gate rupture effect under this heavy ion radiation condition. The gate breakdown mainly occurs in the gate oxide layer at the neck region. This research can provide a theoretical basis for the radiation resistance reinforcement of SiC power devices.

Comparison of single event effect on cascoded low noise amplifier performance metrics for two different frequencies

This manuscript examines the impact of single event effects (SEEs) on the well-known cascoded low noise amplifier (LNA) topology connected with an inter-stage inductor sandwiched between the common source (CS) and common gate transistors for boosting the LNA parameters (i.e., gain, etc). In this article, we have considered that the LNA operates at two different frequencies, such as 10 and 30 GHz, in a radiation-prone environment. The effect of SEEs is analyzed in two ways: (i) non-applying a RF input with dc voltage only, and (ii) applying a RF input with dc bias voltage. The first analysis uses basic integration to evaluate the collected charge (QCollected) for a drain terminal momentary current spike with a suitable time period, and the second analysis estimates the LNA output discontinuity (distortion) using a spectrogram (short-time FFT) to determine the radiation strikes on the cascoded LNA. The collected charge is calculated in the temporal analysis, and the discontinuity of LNA’s RF output is analysed using the spectrogram in the frequency domain analysis. From the temporal and frequency analysis, the LNA that operates at a lower frequency (10 GHz) provides more discontinuity in LNA output (causing more disturbance) than the LNA that operates at a higher frequency (30 GHz).

Simulation of Single-Event Transient Effect for GaN High-Electron-Mobility Transistor.

A GaN high-electron-mobility transistor (HEMT) was simulated using the semiconductor simulation software Silvaco TCAD in this paper. By constructing a two-dimensional structure of GaN HEMT, combined with key models such as carrier mobility, the effects of a different state, different incidence position, different drain voltage, different LET values, and a different incidence angle on the single-event transient effect of GaN HEMT are simulated. LET stands for the linear energy transfer capacity of a particle, which refers to the amount of energy transferred by the particle to the irradiated substance on the unit path. The simulation results show that for GaN HEMTs, the single-event transient effect is more obvious when the device is in off-state than in on-state. The most sensitive location of GaN HEMTs to the single-event effect is in the region near the drain. The peak transient current increases with the increase in the drain bias and incident ion LET values. The drain charge collection time increases with the angle of incidence of heavy ion.