EXTREME-VALUE THEORY APPLICATIONS TO SPACE RADIATION-DAMAGE ASSESSMENT IN SATELLITE MICROELECTRONICS

Calculations of the first and second moments of displacement damage en ergy distributions from elastic collisions and from nuclear reactions, at proton energies ranging from 10 MeV to 300 MeV, are incorporated i nto a model describing the probability of damage as a function of the proton fluence and the size of the sensitive micro-volume in Si. Compa risons between the predicted and measured leakage currents in Si imagi ng arrays illustrate how the Poisson distribution of higher energy nuc lear reaction recoils affects the pixel-to-pixel variance in the damag e across the array for proton exposures equivalent to mission duration of a few years within the earth's trapped proton belts. Extreme value statistics (EVS) quantify the largest expected damage extremes follow ing a given proton fluence, and an analysis derived from the first-pri nciple damage calculations shows excellent agreement with the measured extremes. EVS is also used to demonstrate the presence of high dark c urrent pixels, or ''spikes,'' which occur from different mechanisms. D ifferent sources of spikes were seen in two different imager designs.