ABSTRACT
Many significant innovations in integrated circuit (IC) technologies have been made over the years, but much of the phenomenal success of the semiconductor industry can be attributed to simple geometrical scaling of the individual transistor, which has enabled increasing levels of integration and performance. Recently, commercial MOSFET technologies have reached gate lengths in the tens of nanometers. State-of-the-art bipolar junction transistor (BJT) technologies have scaled as well, although at relatively larger lateral dimensions, since they are based on vertical carrier transport. Accompanying this transistor scaling has been an acute increase in the sensitivity of IC technologies to ionizing radiation, through cumulative ionization and displacement damage that can increase leakage currents and degrade performance, along with a wide range of single-event effects (SEE) that are caused by the interaction of highly energetic particles with the sensitive regions of microelectronic devices and circuits. With decreasing operating voltages and drive currents, the impact of these radiation effects tends to be amplified.
