Radiation Effects on Power Integrated Circuits

Power Integrated Circuits (PICs) offer significant advantages such as reduced area and enhanced reliability in numerous applications. In this paper a first attempt is made evaluate and improve the radiation hardness of the Dielectrically Isolated (DI) Bipolar-CMOS-DMOS (BCDMOS) technology and to identify areas where further investigation is needed. The effects of total dose, dose rate and neutron radiations on the devices in a 4-bit static serial-in / parallel-out shift register with 200V output drive capability. The advantages of DI to ensure latchup free CMOS devices are discussed and the results of two experiments to total dose harden the BCDMOS technology, as well as two-dimensional time-dependent numerical simulations of DMOS transistors in high dose rate radiations are presented.