Some aspects of IC radiation hardness evaluation to the effects of high-energy ions

Abstract

The paper analyzes the features of the experimental evaluation of the single event effects (SEE) cross section dependence on linear energy transfer (LET) for ions with energies above 100 MeV/nucleon. Ion energy degraders use in order to change the values of the LET. The paper presents calculations of LET spectrum at different thicknesses of a polycarbonate degrader for iron ions with energies of 100...450 MeV/nucleon as an example. It is proposed to evaluate the LET values in packaged electronic devices with an unknown physical and chemical composition with help of the modified technique used at the ion accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratory in the USA. An additional technique with preliminary studies on X-ray of packaged electronic is proposed to estimate the mass thickness of the protective layers in integrated circuit. In order to reduce the influence of infamous factors, it is proposed to thin the package based on the results of the analysis of X-ray images. The proposed approach makes it possible to correctly determine the dependence of the SEE cross sections on the LET of both packaged and decapsulated integrated circuits for SEE under high-energy ions. The obtained results are supposed to be used at the specialized ISKRA station, which is part of the NICA nuclotron complex at JINR, Dubna. The presented results make it possible to assess the upset and failure hardness of electronic information systems to the effects of ions of artificial and natural origin.

Keywords

• security of information systems, high-energy ions, single event effects, nica nuclotron.