Ultra-Low Power Consuming Direct Radiation Sensors Based on Floating Gate Structures

Abstract

Abstract:In this paper, we report on ultra-low power consuming single poly floating gate direct radiation sensors. The developed devices are intended for total ionizing dose (TID) measurements and fabricated in a standard CMOS process flow. Sensor design and operation is discussed in detail. Original array sensors were suggested and fabricated that allowed high statistical significance of the radiation measurements and radiation imaging functions. Single sensors and array sensors were analyzed in combination with the specially developed test structures. This allowed insight into the physics of sensor operations and exclusion of the phenomena related to material degradation under irradiation in the interpretation of the measurement results. Response of the developed sensors to various sources of ionizing radiation (Gamma, X-ray, UV, energetic ions) was investigated. The optimal design of sensor for implementation in dosimetry systems was suggested. The roadmap for future improvement of sensor performance is suggested.

Use of High-Field Electron Injection into Dielectrics to Enhance Functional Capabilities of Radiation MOS Sensors

“…An advantage of the RADFET sensors in comparison with the MOS capacitors is the simpler technique to monitor the change of charge state of the dielectric when it is under radiation treatment. This technique is based on measuring of threshold voltage shift of the FET [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. For the MOS capacitors based sensors, we monitor an accumulation of positive charge in the gate dielectric by using whether C-V measurements or voltage shift across the structure when it is under high-field injection of electrons under the mode of constant current flowing (Equation (4)).…”

“…Nowadays in the field of medicine, space devices, nuclear power, etc., metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) sensors of a radiation are widely utilized [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. Most frequently, these sensors are based on p-channel MOSFET (radiation sensitive field effect transistors (RADFET) sensors).…”

“…As a result, one observes a change of threshold voltage of RADFET sensors. Using reference dependencies acquired at earlier stage, one calculates an absorbed dose on the basis of threshold voltage shift [1,[9][10][11][12][13][14][15]. One of the main techniques to raise the sensitivity of RADFET sensors is an applying of positive voltage to the transistor gate [1,4,9,14].…”

Low Power Wireless CMOS System-On-Chip X-Ray Dosimeter

“…The sensitivity is shown to improve by using an array of sensors to a value of 100 mV Gy −1 . However, the use of array increases the power consumption at [42] the power consumption of these sensor devices is similar to the ones reported before.…”

“…Voltage Transfer Characteristics (VTC) of inverter design presented in[39] In a series of publication from 2012 to 2017, a group of researchers from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology published a series of papers to propose the use of inverter design for the radiation dosimetry based on floating-gate technology[40][41][42]. The complementary sensor (C-sensor) design concept is depicted inFigure 2.7.…”