In WP2, the focus has been set on reliable state-of-the-art electronic components. Devices of strategic importance, for industrial and technological applications, such as a high-reliability integrated time-based signal processing circuit or a CMOS imager have been designed in mainstream CMOS technologies, with the requirement of tolerating radiation levels, orders of magnitude larger than...
Sensor interfaces (resistive, capacitive etc.) are integral part of high reliable applications like space, flight, nuclear power plants as well as automotive systems. In the presence of ionizing radiations, total ionizing dose (TID) gradually degrades the performance of integrated CMOS circuits and single event effects (SEEs) create instantaneous voltage fluctuations especially affecting...
In recent years, the power electronics industry has been rapidly evolving thanks to wide
bandgap (WBG) semiconductor materials such as silicon carbide and gallium nitride. However, those materials are still relatively recent within the power semiconductor devices and there are still some technological barriers, which need to be overcome to ensure reliable operation throughout their lifetime...
Most reliability evaluations of radiation effects for advanced technology nodes are conducted on fresh circuits, leaving the coupled effect of radiation and aging degradation unknown. A test vehicle (ProArray) of programmable arrays of transistors and shift-register chains was specially designed to investigates the impact of aging degradation mechanisms on the radiation susceptibility of 28 nm...
Single-Event Transient (SET) effect is increasing in importance in advanced technologies due to the reduction in the inherent masking effect of logical circuits. Thus, in order to improve the reliability of electronics systems operating in a harsh environment, different radiation hardening techniques at design level have been studied in this thesis.
Single Event latchup (SEL) is a potential catastrophic condition that affects CMOS technology. If a radiation particle hits the component, electron-hole pairs are generated in the structure and thus they can lead to the activation of the parasitic thyristors if the deposited energy is large enough. However, the deposited energy by the radiation particle is not the only parameter to consider as...
Increase of dark current is one of the main problems of CMOS image sensors when exposed to ionizing radiation. This is very process and layout dependent. A test chip is designed that has arrays of pixels. Multiple photosensitive devices and layout configurations were included to reduce the dark current without affecting the optical sensitivity of the pixel. This presentation will discuss these...
