Event Details

Dr. Daniel Loveless, Assistant Professor, Department of Electrical Engineering, UT Chattanooga will present a seminar, "Space Radiation and Its Effects on Microelectronic Systems."

A reliability concern of growing interest in the microelectronics community is the deleterious effect of ionizing radiation. The so-called "single events" – single particles which can penetrate semiconductor material leaving ionized charge in their wake – can cause information corruption, transient anomalies, and sometimes irreparable system failure. Single events are ubiquitous; this radiation exists in the environment external to a circuit and emanates from processing and packaging material integral to a circuit. Once only the concern of space-bound systems where increased susceptibilities to single-event effects (SEE) have been reported as device feature sizes decrease and operating frequencies increase, integrated circuit (IC) density and power scaling have propelled this issue to the forefront of reliability concerns at current technology nodes in ground-based and space-deployed electronic systems. This presentation addresses several attributes of IC scaling relevant to radiation degradation, failure modes, and vulnerability. Basic and state-of-the-art approaches for the mitigation of SEEs are presented along with examples of hardened circuits. The presentation concludes with a discussion of the latest techniques for measurement, analysis, and mitigation of transient radiation phenomena, and impacts on future technologies.

Snacks at 3 PM.