Radiation-hardened bulk Si-gate CMOS microprocessor family

RCA and Sandia Laboratories jointly developed a radiation-hardened bulk Si-gate CMOS technology which is used to fabricate the CDP-1800 series microprocessor family. Total dose hardness of 1 x 106 rads (Si) and transient upset hardness of 5 x 108 rads (Si)/sec with no latch up at any transient level was achieved. Radiation-hardened parts manufactured to date include the CDP-1802 microprocessor, the CDP-1834 ROM, the CDP-1852 8-bit I/O port, the CDP-1856 N-bit 1 of 8 decoder, and the TCC-244 256 x 4 Static RAM. The paper is divided into three parts. In the first section, the basic fundamentals of the non-hardened C2L technology used for the CDP-1800 series microprocessor parts is discussed along with the primary reasons for hardening this technology. The second section discusses the major changes in the fabrication sequence that are required to produce radiation-hardened devices. The final section details the electrical performance characteristics of the hardened devices as well as the effects of radiation on device performance. Also included in this section is a discussion of the TCC-244 256 x 4 Static RAM designed jointly by RCA and Sandia Laboratories for this application