Total dose hardness of field programmable gate arrays

In this paper we present the effect of total dose ionization of nonhardened field programmable gate arrays considered for space applications. By irradiating test structures and modeling the circuits that include total dose degradation, the basic leakage mechanism in the design at elevated temperature can be understood Results show that a large array of CMOS inverter structures will conduct large currents when the threshold voltages of the p and n-channel transistors reach the transition point of switching. Results show that if the n- and p-channel thresholds were to be increased in the process, this problem can be mitigated and hardness above 100 krad(Si) can be achieved.<>