A new design concept for accelerated radiative tests from RADSAGA

Mohamed Mounir (ESR08) has developed a new design test structure for accelerated radiative physical tests to account for impact of aging degradation. The task was particularly challenging since existing standards and models were all based on fresh devices characterization. In addition, the intensive scaling of advanced technologies works to increase the stochastic nature of the degradation mechanisms. As a consquence, a significantly large number of individual devices and circuits shall be characterized. This can be achieved by means of a Test Element Group (TEG).

The test structure (ProArray) consists of four programmable arrays of transistors and six shift-register chains implemented in a 28 nm UTBB FD-SOI technology. The programmable arrays have more than 30,000 transistors. The diverse types of  transistors (flavor, geometric  dimensions, and poly-bias) in the ProArray chip will assist in precisely characterizing FD-SOI technology for both radiation effects and aging mechanisms.