Radiation Hardened Flip-Flops Minimizing Area, Power, and Delay Overheads with 1/100 Lower α-SER in a 130 nm Bulk Process

Abstract

We examined the radiation hardness of the several types of flip-flops fabricated in a 130 nm bulk process by alpha-ray irradiation tests and circuit simulation. The simulated $\alpha -$SER of FFs with the critical charge larger than 14 fC becomes 1/100 of that with the critical charge of 10 fC. We propose a radiation-hardened flip-flop minimizing area, delay, and power overheads with 1/100 lower $\alpha -$SER in a 130 nm bulk process. The radiation hardness is achieved by adding series transistors and wires with only less than 14% area, 7% delay, and 12% power overheads in order to increase the critical charge. Alpha-ray irradiation tests revealed that the proposed method can reduce soft error rates to 1/100.