Develop a methodology to estimate in-flight single event error rate induced by proton via direct ionisation for deep submicron technologies

 

More and more space applications and missions are considering the use of deep submicron technologies. Digital CMOS technologies below 65nm are sensitive to proton induced Single Event Effects (SEE) by direct ionisation mechanism. The consequence is a significant increase of SEE rates in flight (up to several orders of magnitude). This effect will be the dominant cause of SEE in orbit for these technologies. This poses a very significant challenge to SEE mitigation methods used in spacecraft electronics. Today, there is no accepted standard method to characterise these effects, and then estimate the error rate in orbit.

 

The activity encompasses the following tasks:

- state of art review and simulation work

- test procedure and error rate methodology definition

- test candidates selection from 28 to 22 nm MOS digital technologies

- low energy protons SEE tests

- analysis

- test procedure and error methodology finalisation

- development of a software routine to estimate in-flight error rate induced proton via direct ionization.