Using commercial semiconductor technologies in space

New issues are discussed that must be considered when unhardened commercial technologies are used in space applications, as well as hardness assurance techniques. Large differences in dose-rate effects were observed for different circuit types from the same manufacturer, which may be due to differences in the thickness of isolation oxides used in processing. Data are presented for scaled MOS devices that show how total dose hardness and hard error rates are projected as devices are scaled to smaller feature size. Hard errors are expected to be a significant problem for devices with feature size below 0.6 /spl mu/m.