As the transistor size scales down exponentially to nanometric dimensions, the susceptibility of electronic circuits to radiation increases drastically. Protection against the radiation is important in the field of biomedical, aerospace, communication and computing. Flip-flops (FFs) and static random access memories (SRAMs) are used to store the data in many critical applications where their performance must be resilient to radiation exposures to guarantee reliability. Therefore development of resilient FFs and SRAM are the challenging and demanding problems. In this chapter, different approaches are analysed to design these radiation hard circuits.

Chapter Contents:

• 12.1 Introduction
• 12.1.1 SEU modelling
• 12.2 Design of new radiation-tolerant FF
• 12.2.1 SEU in conventional flip-flop
• 12.2.1.1 Normal operation without a particle hit for D flip-flop
• 12.2.1.2 Operation with a particle hit for D flip-flop
• 12.2.2 Reported SEU mitigation techniques in FFs
• 12.2.3 Proposed SEU mitigation using circuit level approach
• 12.2.3.1 Normal operation without a particle hit for proposed flip-flop
• 12.2.3.2 Operation with a particle hit for proposed flip-flop
• 12.2.4 Results and discussion on FF simulations
• 12.2.5 Summary of radiation tolerant FF
• 12.3 Radiation hardened SRAM cell
• 12.3.1 Proposed radiation hardened RHD10T SRAM cell
• 12.3.2 Evaluation of radiation hardened SRAM design
• 12.3.2.1 Single event single node effect
• 12.3.2.2 Single event multiple node effects
• 12.3.3 Comparative analysis
• 12.3.3.1 Process variations
• 12.3.4 Summary of radiation hardened SRAM cell
• References

Inspec keywords: flip-flops; SRAM chips; integrated circuit design; radiation hardening (electronics)

Other keywords: resilient FF; radiation hard circuit design; SRAM; transistor size scales; electronic circuits; nanometric dimensions; flip-flop; static random access memories; radiation exposures

Subjects: Logic and switching circuits; Logic circuits; Digital circuit design, modelling and testing; Semiconductor storage; Radiation effects (semiconductor technology); Memory circuits