Single-Event Effect Responses of Integrated Planar Inductors in 65-nm CMOS
Stefan Biereigel, S. Kulis, Paul Leroux, P. Moreira, Alexander Kölpin, Jeffrey Prinzie
Abstract
This article describes a previously unreported single-event radiation effect in spiral inductors manufactured in a commercial CMOS technology when subjected to ionizing radiation. Inductors play a major role as the component determining the frequency of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$LC$ </tex-math></inline-formula> tank oscillators, which is why any radiation effect in these passive components can have a detrimental impact on the performance of clock generation circuits. Different experiments performed to localize and characterize the single-event effect (SEE) response in a radiation-hardened PLL circuit are discussed and presented together with a hypothesis for the underlying physical mechanism.