Ultra‐Strong Comprehensive Radiation Effect Tolerance in Carbon Nanotube Electronics

Abstract

Carbon nanotube (CNT) field-effect transistors (FETs) have been considered ideal building blocks for radiation-hardened integrated circuits (ICs), the demand for which is exponentially growing, especially in outer space exploration and the nuclear industry. Many studies on the radiation tolerance of CNT-based electronics have focused on the total ionizing dose (TID) effect, while few works have considered the single event effects (SEEs) and displacement damage (DD) effect, which are more difficult to measure but may be more important in practical applications. We first executed measurements of the SEEs and DD effect of CNT FETs and ICs and then presented a comprehensive radiation effect analysis of CNT electronics. The CNT ICs without special irradiation reinforcement technology exhibit a comprehensive radiation tolerance, including a 1 × 10 4 MeV•cm 2 /mg level of the laser-equivalent threshold linear energy transfer (LET) for SEEs, 2.8×10 13 MeV/g for DD and 2 Mrad (Si) for TID, which are at least 4 times higher than those in conventional radiation-hardened ICs. The ultrahigh intrinsic comprehensive radiation tolerance will promote the applications of CNT ICs in high-energy solar and cosmic radiation environments.

Current Transients in Graphene Electronics under Single‐Particle Irradiation

“…Energy deposition under SPI is quantified through the stopping power S, which can be measured experimentally [6,34] or predicted by RT-TDDFT calculations that reveal electron capture and emission processes. [17,19,35] The stopping power SðKÞ shows two peaks at irradiation energies of about K % 10 eV and % 100 keV, which corresponds to nuclear stopping with minor plasmonic electronic excitation [16,17] and the dominance of electronic stopping, [36] respectively.…”

“…Energy deposition under SPI is quantified through the stopping power S , which can be measured experimentally [ 6,34 ] or predicted by RT‐TDDFT calculations that reveal electron capture and emission processes. [ 17,19,35 ] The stopping power …”

“…The response is shown to be determined by the electron density and ionic charges, which can be engineered through strain, defect, and phase changes that are particularly prominent in low-dimensional materials. [52][53][54] Although recent experimental studies clearly demonstrated the irradiation effects on the performance of nanoelectronics, [6] resolving the underlying physics of SPI still remains challenging. Insufficient temporal and spatial resolutions limit the characterization of excited nuclear and electronic dynamics.…”

“…[ 5 ] Compared to conventional silicon‐based radiation‐hardened integrated circuits (ICs), comprehensive radiation damage tolerance was also observed in CNT electronics such as FETs and static random‐access memories (SRAMs). [ 6 ] However, the state‐of‐the‐art understanding of SEEs is limited to the device performance and relies heavily on semiempirical models. [ 7 ] The underlying microscopic processes of lattice and electronic excitation were not considered.…”

Heavy Ion Displacement Damage Effect in Carbon Nanotube Field Effect Transistors

“…The DD effect in CNT FETs, however, has not been thoroughly investigated. Although preliminary research has been conducted to quantify top-gated CNT FETs’ DD tolerance, CNT FETs demonstrate a distinct degradation trend compared with their Si counterpart, − and its governing mechanism has not been revealed. Although experimental − and simulation studies have studied the atomic-level dislocation generation in CNTs, the coupling between the material damage to the transistor performance degradation has not been systematically investigated.…”