Intrinsic SEU reduction from use of heterojunctions in gallium arsenide bipolar circuits

Conference · Tue Dec 01 00:00:00 EST 1987 · IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.; (United States)

OSTI ID:7202045

Salzman, J F; McNulty, P J; Knudson, A R

Use of GaAs/AlGaASs heterojunctions at the base emitter junction in MBE-type GaAs biploar circuits reduces the thickness of the SEU sensitive volume associated with each transistor to about 0.2 ..mu..m. This results in a sharply reduced charge collection and a correspondingly sharp reduction in SEU sensitivity even for low values of the critical charge. The effect is illustrated with an H I/sup 2/L gate array developed at Texas Instruments in which shift registers do not exhibit upsets upon exposure to heavy ions with LET values of up to 20 MeV cm/sup 2//mg(GaAs) which is equivalent to over 30 MeV cm/sup 2//mg(Si). A low-current version of the same shift registers exhibits an upset cross section of only 3 E-13 cm/sup 2//bit at an LET of 20 MeV cm/sup 2//mg and zero at 11 MeV cm/sup 2//mg(GaAs). Neither of the devices could be upset by exposure to 63 MeV protons at a fluence of 1E + 12 rho/cm/sup 2/ in agreement with the predictions of the CUPID codes.

• Research Organization: Texas Instruments, Dallas, TX (US)
• OSTI ID: 7202045
• Report Number(s): CONF-8707112-; TRN: 88-025497
• Journal Information: IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.; (United States), Vol. NS-34:6; Conference: Annual conference on nuclear and space radiation effects, Snowmass Village, CO, USA, 28 Jul 1987
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE
42 ENGINEERING
ELECTRONIC CIRCUITS
DESIGN
HETEROJUNCTIONS
PHYSICAL RADIATION EFFECTS
GALLIUM ARSENIDES
MATERIALS TESTING
PROTON TRANSPORT
HEAVY IONS
LET
C CODES
CROSS SECTIONS
RADIOSENSITIVITY
TRANSISTORS
ARSENIC COMPOUNDS
ARSENIDES
CHARGED PARTICLES
CHARGED-PARTICLE TRANSPORT
COMPUTER CODES
ENERGY TRANSFER
GALLIUM COMPOUNDS
IONS
JUNCTIONS
PNICTIDES
RADIATION EFFECTS
RADIATION TRANSPORT
SEMICONDUCTOR DEVICES
SEMICONDUCTOR JUNCTIONS
TESTING
360605* - Materials- Radiation Effects
420800 - Engineering- Electronic Circuits & Devices- (-1989)