Reliability and radiation effects in IC technologies

The reliability of advanced integrated circuit (IC) technologies may be dominated by the interaction of environmental radiation with the devices in the ICs. In particular, single event upsets (SEUs) and soft errors produced by single energetic particles may have a significant impact on the error rate of digital ICs. Additionally, some of the mechanisms responsible for long-term degradation of ICs under normal operating conditions are related to degradation mechanisms produced by ionizing radiation. This paper reviews issues related to prediction of error rates in ICs and discusses the roles of hydrogen in bias-temperature instability and total-ionizingdose radiation sensitivity.