EAPSI: Modeling of Radiation Effects for Advanced Silicon-Based Electronic Systems within Extreme Environments

微电子革命帮助技术在全球传播，导致我们共享信息、开展业务和教育的方式发生了根本性的变化。随着全球电信、天气雷达和卫星导航(GPS)等应用程序结合了先进的在轨电子设备，了解这些系统如何在动态环境中运行是有意义的。过高的环境温度和暴露在电离辐射下会使电子设备降级并产生错误，如果不加以控制，可能会导致灾难性的系统故障。这项研究将作为对下一代电子产品在辐射强烈的环境中面临的主要可靠性问题的调查。这项研究将与日本相模原市日本宇宙航空研究开发机构(JAXA)下属的空间与宇航科学研究所(ISAS)先进半导体制造和辐射效应研究专家Kazuyuki HiRose博士合作进行。最终，这项合作研究将有助于开发能够准确预测系统级灵敏度的新模型，使工程师能够设想新的设计策略，以确保长期、无错误的操作。这项工作旨在调查半导体工艺规模对硅-锗异质结双极晶体管(SiGe HBT)平台辐射耐受性的影响。抗辐射电子产品的传统设计方法依赖于多个系统冗余和金属屏蔽，这会带来严重的重量和成本损失。在轨道和深空应用中对灵活、低成本电子设备的需求使SiGe技术成为聚光灯下的焦点，但这些现代平台在辐射密集型环境中的可行长期能力在很大程度上仍有待探索。精确的器件模型和辐射事件模拟技术是分析器件级操作灵敏度和预测电路级和系统级对这些随机暂态过程响应的有效方法。通过将这些瞬变模型扩展到多个SiGe技术节点和功能偏置，一个全面的SiGe HBT辐射模型将为下一代抗辐射电子产品的设计和制造提供独特的模拟能力。该NSF EAPSI奖是与日本科学促进会(JSPS)合作资助的。

The microelectronic revolution has helped diffuse technology throughout the globe, leading to a radical shift in the way we share information, conduct business, and educate ourselves. As applications such as global telecommunications, weather radar, and satellite navigation (GPS) incorporate advanced in-orbit electronics, it is pertinent to understand how these systems operate within a dynamic environment. Wide ambient temperatures and exposure to ionizing radiation can degrade electronics and generate errors, which if unchecked, can lead to a catastrophic system failure. This research will serve as an investigation into the primary reliability issues facing next-generation electronics within radiation-intense environments. This research will be conducted in collaboration with Dr. Kazuyuki Hirose, an expert in advanced semiconductor fabrication and radiation effects research at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), a division of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) in Sagamihara, Japan. Ultimately, this collaborative investigation will help develop new models, which can accurately predict system-level sensitivities, enabling engineers to envision new design strategies for ensuring long-term, error-free operations.This work aims to investigate the effects of semiconductor technology scaling on the radiation tolerance of silicon-germanium heterojunction bipolar transistor (SiGe HBT) platforms. Conventional design methodologies for radiation-hardened electronics rely on multiple system redundancies and metallic shielding, which come at severe weight and cost penalties. The need for flexible, low-cost electronics in orbital and deep space applications has brought SiGe technologies into the spotlight, but the viable long-term capabilities of these modern platforms within radiation-intense environments remains largely unexplored. Accurate device models coupled with radiation event simulation techniques are necessary to provide an effective method to analyze device-level operational sensitivities and predict the circuit-level and system-level response to these random transient processes. By expanding these transient models across multiple SiGe technology nodes and functional biases, a comprehensive, SiGe HBT radiation model would provide unique simulation capabilities for the design and fabrication of next-generation, radiation-hard electronics. This NSF EAPSI award is funded in collaboration with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).