Space and Nuclear Radiation Effects in Electronic Devices and Circuits

Radiation effects from either the natural space environment outside the earth's atmosphere or nuclear weapons can degrade semiconductor microelectronic and photonic devices and circuits. This is becoming increasingly important as electronic devices continue to scale down in size and increase in complexity.

CFDRC provides modeling and simulation expertise and validated tools for analysis of radiation effects from both single-event (ion strike) and total-dose radiation phenomena in devices and circuits. Download brochure(pdf)

Radiation Hardening - exploring and developing a variety of approaches to make integrated circuits (ICs) and microelectronics devices resilient to radiation. Development of radiation-hardened, or rad-hard, microelectronic components requires both changing designs and altering manufacturing processes.
Computer modeling may significantly speed up this process.

Radiation Hardening By Design (RHBD) - developing ways to design for hardness, so that commercial chip foundries can produce them without changing the fabrication process. To develop RHBD concepts, accurate computational models and reliable simulation tools are needed.

NanoTCAD: 3D Device Simulator with Radiation Effects

CFDRC's Radiation-Hardening NanoTCAD package incorporates advanced models of radiation effects built into our state-of-the-art semiconductor devices simulator (2D, 3D, static, transient).
Simulations are controlled through user-friendly graphical interface , and results can be viewed by convenient post-processing and visualization tools (x-y plots, 3D plots, vectors, colors, animations, ...)

NanoTCAD can efficiently simulate the specific phenomena related to ionizing radiation: single-event effects (SEE), including single-event latchups (SEL) and single-event upsets (SEU); total ionizing dose (TID) effects, including leakage due to trapped charges in oxides and shallow trench isolation (STI); dose rate (transient radiation) effects, like X-ray pulses, resulting in parasitic photocurrents NanoTCAD features convenient import of circuit layouts (GDSII, CIF, DXF) generated by EDA tools. This permits easy 3D model building and meshing of complex multi-layer electronic structures and ICs The advanced, state-of-the-art numerical methods and solvers allow for efficient and reliable simulation of most modern IC technologies and devices, e.g. proved on 0.18 and 0.13 µm CMOS, BiCMOS (IBM, TSMC, Jazz) and SOI. The NanoTCAD modeling tools have been verified and validated in numerous projects for DoD, NASA, and Space/Defense Industry.

Electron density along ion track and current vectors Charge-collection iso-surfaces during ion strike

The CFDRC modeling and simulation solutions expedite rad-hard design, by reducing reliance on expensive and time-consuming test chip fabrication and radiation testing.

Mixed-Mode Simulation: SPICE + 3D Device Model (NanoTCAD)

In a mixed-mode simulation of the heavy-ion strike effect ("single-event upset") in a static memory circuit, the struck transistor is modeled in the "device domain" (i.e., using 3?dimensional device model), while the rest of the memory circuit is simulated by SPICE.