Irradiation experiments with high-voltage power devices as a possible means to predict failure rates due to cosmic rays
- Resource Type
- Conference
- Authors
- Voss, P.; Maier, K.H.; Meczynski, W.; Becker, H.W.; Normand, E.; Wert, J.L.; Oberg, D.I.; Majewski, P.P.
- Source
- Proceedings of 9th International Symposium on Power Semiconductor Devices and IC's Power semiconductor devices and ICs Power Semiconductor Devices and IC's, 1997. ISPSD '97., 1997 IEEE International Symposium on. :169-172 1997
- Subject
- Power, Energy and Industry Applications
Components, Circuits, Devices and Systems
Engineered Materials, Dielectrics and Plasmas
Voltage
Neutrons
Cosmic rays
Failure analysis
Shape
Single event upset
Semiconductor diodes
Resistors
Microscopy
Predictive models
- Language
- ISSN
- 1063-6854
High-voltage diodes with active areas between 1 cm/sup 2/ and 32 cm/sup 2/ were irradiated either with carbon ions having energies between 17 MeV and 252 MeV or /spl alpha/-particles of 98 MeV or neutrons with energies up to 800 MeV. As the voltage across the devices was raised all of them failed eventually, even if there was a 1 MOhm resistor in series. With the high-energy carbon ions it could be shown that the failure can be triggered at locations that are hundreds of microns away from the pn-junction. The neutron experiment indicates that there may be a steep fall-off in failure rate at the lowest voltages.