A 4.5 MGy TID-Tolerant CMOS Bandgap Reference Circuit Using a Dynamic Base Leakage Compensation Technique

The total-ionizing-dose (TID) radiation tolerance of bandgap references in deep-submicron CMOS technology is generally limited by the radiation introduced leakage current in diodes. An analysis of this phenomenon is given in this paper, and a dynamic base leakage compensation (DBLC) technique is proposed to improve the radiation hardness of a bandgap reference built in a standard 0.13 μm CMOS technology. A temperature coefficient of 15 ppm/^°C from -40^°C to 125^°C is measured before irradiation. The voltage variation from 0^°C to 100^°C is only ±1 mV for an output voltage of 600 mV. Gamma irradiation assessment proves that the bandgap reference is tolerant to a total ionizing dose of at least 4.5 MGy. The output reference voltage exhibits a variation of less than 3% during the entire experiment, when the chip is irradiated by gamma ray at a dose rate of 27 kGy/h.