Radiation Tolerant Ultra Low Power CMOS Microelectronics : Technology Development Status

Electronic components used in spacecraft are susceptible to the radiation environment that causes detrimental effect which could jeopardize the mission. Much effort has been devoted to methodologies that would produce radiation tolerant or hardened devices hopefully with speed-power performance close to commercial parts. Recent development in combining radiation tolerance by design technique with ultra low power CMOS circuit technology promises dramatic impact on future NASA spacecraft. The measured performance at 0.5V demonstrates over 30:1 power reduction compared to a similar device with 3.3 V supply voltage. This paper gives a status report on the development of such radiation tolerant ultra low power electronics technology.