Effect of Temperature on Microcircuit Radiation Response

The effect of temperature on the primary photocurrent of the base-collector and collector-substrate junctions of isolated transistors from three types of microcircuits was investigated over the temperature range -50° C to 125° C. Only small changes in base-collector primary photocurrent were observed, whereas collector-substrate primary photocurrent increased by a factor of three to five with decreasing temperature. The temperature dependence of the transient response of two microcircuits near the failure threshold is analyzed and shown to depend on the temperature dependence of primary photocurrent and transistor electrical parameters.