Assessment of Radiation Tolerance of Flash Memory by γ-Ray Irradiation

Abstract

The radiation tolerance of a microcontroller (Raspberry Pi) required for the development of decommissioning robots was investigated. We found that the flash memory needed to boot the microcontroller had particularly low-radiation tolerance, significantly reducing the operation duration of the microcontroller in a radiation environment. We also found that certain high-performance flash memories have high radiation tolerance. Investigation of the process by which flash memory becomes inoperable revealed that internal memory information is rewritten owing to irradiation, leading to limited lifetime for memory.