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Radiation Testing Electronics with Heavy Ions-The Best Way to Hit a Target Moving Ever Exponentially FasterIn 1972, when engineers at Hughes Aircraft Corporation discovered that errors in their satellite avionics were being caused by cosmic rays (so-called single-event effects, or SEE), Moore's Law was only 7 years old. Now, more than 45 years on, the scaling that drove Moore's Law for its first 35 years has reached its limits. However, electronics technology continues to evolve exponentially and SEE remain a formidable issue for use of electronics in space. SEE occur when a single ionizing particle passes through a sensitive volume in an active semiconductor device and generates sufficient charge to cause anomalous behavior or failure in the device. Because SEE can occur at any time during the mission, the emphasis of SEE risk management methodologies is ensuring that all SEE modes in a device under test are detected by the test. Because a particle's probability of causing an SEE generally increases as the particle becomes more ionizing, heavy-ion beams have been and remain the preferred tools for elucidating SEE vulnerabilities. In this talk we briefly discuss space radiation environments and SEE mechanisms, describe SEE test methodologies and discuss current and future challenges for use of heavy-ion beams for SEE testing in an era when the continued validity of Moore's law depends on innovation rather than CMOS scaling.
Document ID
20180002433
Acquisition Source
Goddard Space Flight Center
Document Type
Presentation
Authors
Ladbury, Ray
(NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Greenbelt, MD, United States)
Date Acquired
April 17, 2018
Publication Date
April 14, 2018
Subject Category
Space Radiation
Quality Assurance And Reliability
Report/Patent Number
GSFC-E-DAA-TN54464
Meeting Information
Meeting: APS 2018 American Physical Society Conference
Location: Columbus, OH
Country: United States
Start Date: April 14, 2018
End Date: April 17, 2018
Sponsors: American Physical Society
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.
Keywords
space radiation environments
Single Event Effects (SEE)
test methodologies
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