INSULATOR PHOTOCURRENTS - APPLICATION TO DOSE-RATE HARDENING OF CMOS SOI INTEGRATED-CIRCUITS/

Irradiation of insulators with a pulse of high energy x-rays can induc e photocurrents in the interconnections of integrated circuits. We pre sent, here, a new method to measure and analyse this effect together w ith a simple model. We also demonstrate that these insulator photocurr ents have to be taken into account to obtain high levels of dose-rate hardness with CMOS on SOI integrated circuits, especially flip-flops o r memory blocks of ASICs. We show that it explains some of the upsets observed in a SRAM embedded in an ASIC.