The Effects of Proton Irradiation on the Performance of High-Voltage n-MOSFETs Implemented in a Low-Voltage SiGe BiCMOS Platform

Author

Najafizadeh, Laleh ; Vo, Tuan ; Phillips, Stanley D. ; Cheng, Peng ; Wilcox, Edward P. ; Cressler, John D. ; Mojarradi, Mohammad ; Marshall, Paul W.

Author_Institution

Sch. of Electr. & Comput. Eng., Georgia Inst. of Technol., Atlanta, GA

Volume

55

Issue

6

fYear

2008

Firstpage

3253

Lastpage

3258

Abstract

This paper presents the first comprehensive investigation of the impact of proton irradiation on the performance of high-voltage (HV) nMOS transistors implemented in a low-voltage (LV) SiGe BiCMOS technology. The effects of irradiation gate bias, irradiation substrate bias, and operating substrate bias on the radiation response of these transistors are examined. Experimental results show that the radiation-induced subthreshold leakage current under different irradiation biasing conditions remains negligible after exposure to a total dose of 600 krad(Si). We find that there are differences in the radiation response of LV and HV MOSFETs, suggesting that the mechanisms involved in causing degradation in LV and HV transistors could be of fundamentally different origins.

Keywords

BiCMOS integrated circuits; Ge-Si alloys; MOSFET; BiCMOS; SiGe; high-voltage nMOS transistors; irradiation gate bias; irradiation substrate bias; n-MOSFET; proton irradiation; radiation-induced subthreshold leakage current; BiCMOS integrated circuits; CMOS technology; Germanium silicon alloys; Integrated circuit reliability; Ionization; MOSFET circuits; Measurement; Moon; Protons; Silicon germanium; High-voltage CMOS transistors; MOSFET; SiGe; ionization damage; total dose radiation effects;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Nuclear Science, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9499

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/TNS.2008.2007120

Filename

4723771