One of the primary design considerations for a space mission is the survivability of its electronic systems in an ionizing radiation environment. The increasingly complex mission requirements of modern spacecraft for military, commercial and scientific applications have mandated the need for highly capable microelectronics. This trend has been accompanied by the need to provide affordable, lightweight, low volume and low power systems. Both these trends have resulted in the need to adopt commercial microelectronics for space missions as well as to examine emerging technologies. By their very nature, commercial technologies are constantly changing.
The effects of radiations on commercial device technologies have widely been discussed in literature. This paper summarizes these discussions to outline trends in different radiation effects with changing device technologies. A review on radiation response of very large scale integration (VLSI) devices will also be presented. |
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