RADECS 2010 Proceedings - [SP5-2]

Quantitative Enhanced Low Dose Rate Sensitivity Model Parameter Extraction

Gennady I. Zebrev1, Rustem G. Useinov2, Dmitry Boychenko3, Alexey A. Kuzovlev1,4, and Vasily S. Anashin4
National Research Nuclear University MEPHI, Moscow, 115409, Russia Research Institute of Scientific Instruments, Lytkarino, Moscow region, Russia 3 Specialized Electronic Systems, Moscow, Russia 2 Scientific Research Institute of Space Instrument Engineering, Moscow, Russia
3 1

Based mainly on literature data for irradiation of bipolar devices at different temperatures the quantitative parameter extraction of the ELDRS model is performed. Two types of defects responsible for degradation of NPN and PNP devices have found. A theoretical framework for description of switched dose rate is presented. It is proposed that observed degradation saturation in bipolar circuits may be caused by simultaneous annealing with activation energy which found to be ~ 0.8 eV. Variants of prediction methods are described and discussed. The results may have implications for hardness assurance testing
Index Terms ELDRS, Model, Parameter Extraction, Annealing

I. INTRODUCTION

T is well known that bipolar devices (for example, operational amplifiers) are degraded up to factors ~10 greater at low-dose rate (specific for space) than at typical laboratory high-dose rate (1-100 rad/s). This effect referred as to Enhanced Low Dose Rate Sensitivity (ELDRS) makes considerable problems with the long-term bipolar circuit behavior prediction in space radiation environments [1]. This phenomenon is known to be not very repeatable, with substantially different results depending on such factors as processing, fabrication and bias during irradiation. Nonetheless it is generally accepted now that the ELDRS effects are caused by enhanced recombination of electrons with trapped or slowly moving holes at high dose rate (see, for example, Ref. [1]). Specifically, according to [2, 3, 4] the ELDRS effects are in fact due to the true dose rate dependence of charge yield caused by excess Langevin recombination between mobile electrons and holes localized on shallow trap and/or bandgap tail of density of states in amorphous isolation. Thus, according to Refs. [2-4] the ELDRS effects are in fact due to the true dose rate dependence of charge yield controlled by excess recombination between mobile electrons and localized holes. It has been found the analytical expression for the effective charge yield can be given by the following explicit equations (1 + 4 f ) 1/2 1 , (1a) eff ( P, T , tox , Eox ) = G ( Eox ) 2f
f ( P, T , tox , Eox )
2 q tox

localized states, G is geminate recombination coefficient, Eox is electric field in the oxides, tox is effective oxide thickness. The objective of this report is to extract parameters of the model based on literature data for devices of bipolar technologies including irradiation at different temperatures. II. PARAMETER EXTRACTION FROM LINEAR IN DOSE CURVES Generally speaking, the extraction procedure for multiparametric model based on restricted set of experimental data is very difficult and ill-conditioned problem. The situation becomes simpler recalling that most of the parameters are known from independent sources (see Table 1).
TABLE I LIST OF USED CONSTANTS Symbol Kg h (e) Quantity Electron-hole generation constant in the SiO2 Mobile hole (electron) mobility in the SiO2 Dielectric permittivity of the SiO2 Value ~81012 cm-3(rad (SiO2))-1 ~ 10-6 (~ 10) cm2 / V s ~4

ox

For steady-state long-term irradiation one can neglect timedependent effects and characterize the ELDRS effects by a slope of the curves in approximately linear dose dependencies. We have analyzed experimental data for bipolar devices of different types taken from literature listed in the Table II.
TABLE II LIST OF REFERENCES USED IN THIS SECTION

p , (1b) 2 6 ox 0 h Eox k BT where T is the irradiation temperature, P is a dose rate, h is the hole mobility in SiO2, p (in Ref. [3] it was experimentally found p 0.4 eV) is effective energy depth of the hole

G ( Eox ) K g P exp

DUT
LM124 LM193 LM158 LM108A

References
Ref. [5] Fig.3 Ref. [6] Fig.1 Ref. [7] Fig.5 Ref. [8] Figs. 2,3

Manuscript received September 17, 2010. Corresponding author: G. I. Zebrev (e-mail: gizebrev@mephi.ru).

Assuming linear response in dose we have found from normalized experimental dependencies a rather robust set of

RADECS 2010 Proceedings - [SP5-2]

parameters having reasonable magnitudes (see Table III).
TABLE III. EXTRACTED PARAMETERS DUT LM124 LM193 LM158 (DC 9819) LM108A Reference [Johnston et al., 2005] [Yui at al., 2002) [McClure, 2003] [Johnston et al., 2005] G 0.5 0.5 0.5 0.5

2 fitting dimensional constant AD characterizes relative efficiency of dose degradation for different devices;
Eox , V/cm 105 105 1.4105 10
5

tox , m 0.7 1.3 0.5 0.5

p, eV 0.39 0.39 0.39 0.39

III. PARAMETERS OF SIMULTANEOUS RECOMBINATION CENTERS ANNEALING Irradiation at elevated temperatures is normally used to model ELDRS effect. At elevated irradiation temperatures a competition between two differently directed processes occurs. The base current goes up at relatively small irradiation temperature elevation due to the charge yield increase (properly ELDRS). If a further radiation temperature increase takes place, a part of recombination centers would decay and the base current reduces due to simultaneous time-dependent recombination centers annealing processes. It is assumed in [4] the existence of the only type of defect (recombination centers). For a more detailed fitting with experimental data we utilize in this report a model containing two types of defects with different anneal constants.

a dimensionless constant parameterizes partial contribution of two types of defects ( =1 corresponds to equal density of different defects). The temperature-dependent anneal time constants for recombination centers a1(T) and a2(T) are characterized here for simplicity by a single time constant a0 and different annealing activation energies a1 and a2 to be determined by fitting with the experiments a1 = a 0 exp ( a1 kBT ) , a 2 = a 0 exp ( a 2 kBT ) . (3) The literature sources used are listed in the Table IV.
TABLE IV LITERATURE SOURCES DUT type NPN PNP References [9] Figs.6a and 6b [10]

Parameter Dose AD

TABLE V. EXTRACTED PARAMETERS FOR NPN DEVICES FOR VARIETY OF DOSES Extracted values for NPN devices 20 krad 0.496 0.417 40 krad 0.537 0.575 70 krad 0.549 0.918 100 krad 0.522 1.21

TABLE VI. EXTRACTED PARAMETERS FOR PNP DEVICES FOR VARIETY OF DOSES Parameter Dose AD 4 krad 0.05 142.2 10 krad 0.05 142.9 Extracted values for PNP devices 20 krad 0.05 136.8 40 krad 0.05 115.0 100 krad 0.05 75.3 200 krad 0.05 51.4

Generalizing the kinetic model in Ref. [4] for a case of two types of defects we have written an expression for the radiation-induced excess base current IB in a form
I B ( D , P ) = AD eff ( P, T , Eox ) P 1+

D D a1 (T ) 1 exp + a 2 (T ) 1 exp P (T ) P (T ) . a1 a2

(4) where P is dose rate of steady-state irradiation; a normalizing

Formal fitting procedure resulted in the fitted parameters a 0 10-7s, a1 0.8 eV, a 2 1.2 eV, tox ~ 0.5 m, Eox ~ 105 V/cm exhibits excellent agreement between simulation results and experimental data both for the NPN and PNP devices (see Figs. 1 and 2).The ELDRS parameters are taken from the Table III. Extracted parameters and AD for different doses can be seen in Tables V and VI. Notice that taking into account the second defect with larger annealing activation energy (with portion of approximately 35 % in the NPN devices) allows to describe the surviving of excess recombination current even under irradiation at

RADECS 2010 Proceedings - [SP5-2]

I
800 krd HSiO 2 L

50

294 rd s HSiO 2 L

NPN

40

DIB , nA

30

400 krd HSiO 2 L

20

50

10

0 0

200 krd HSiO 2 L

100

100 krd HSiO 2 L

200

250

150

Temperature, C

Fig. 1a. Experimental dependencies of NPN BJT as function of irradiation temperature for different doses with dose rate 294 rad/s (adapted from Ref.[9])

Fig. 1b. Comparison between the experiments and simulation with extracted parameters presented in Table V.
500

400

294 rd s HSiO 2 L

PNP

100 krd HSiO 2 L

200 krd HSiO 2 L

DIB , nA

300

200

100

50

0 0

20 krd HSiO 2 L

40 krd HSiO 2 L

200

10 krd HSiO 2 L
150

100

4 krd HSiO 2 L

250

Temperature, C

Fig. 2a. Experimental dependencies of lateral PNP BJT as function of irradiation temperature for different doses with dose rate 294 rad/s (adapted from Ref. [10]).

Fig. 2b. Comparison between the experiments and simulation with extracted parameters presented in Table VI.

T=250 oC (cf. with simulation in Fig. 10 in Ref. [4]). A portion of such defect in the PNP devices is negligible (~ 5%) and almost full simultaneous anneal takes place under hightemperature (T=250 oC) irradiation. Notice that taking into account the second defect with larger annealing activation energy (with portion of approximately 35 % in the NPN devices) allows us to describe the surviving of the excess recombination current under irradiation even at T=250 oC (cf. with simulation in Fig. 10 in Ref. [4]). A portion of such defects in the PNP devices is negligible (~ 5%) and almost full simultaneous anneal takes place under hightemperature (T=250 oC) irradiation. We suppose that two types of the defects are the same or similar to that were identified in the early TSC experiments by Fleetwood et al. [11]. Significant difference in activation energies can be explained as an artifact of our extraction procedure. Notice as

well that degradation efficiency is descending function of dose for high doses in the PNP devices and growing function for the NPN devices while the portions of two defect densities remain almost dose-independent. The reason of oppositely directed behavior for two types of devices remains still controversial and unclear for us.
A. Saturation of Dose dependence Eq.4 implies saturation of degradation occurring due to quasi-steady compensation of buildup and annealing processes. Assuming single defect type, one gets (5) I B ( SAT ) = AD ( P, Eox , Tirr ) P a (Tirr )

where saturation level degradation, depending generally on dose rate, irradiation temperature, electric field in the field oxide. Mathematical generalization of Eq.4 to the case of

RADECS 2010 Proceedings - [SP5-2]

experiments with dose rate switching at dose Dswitch during irradiation from P1 to P2 at constant temperature simply reads as D I B ( D, P ) = ADeff ( P ) P a ( Tirr ) 1 exp 1 1 1 P (T ) 1 a irr at D < Dswitch (6a) and
D Dswitch I B ( D, P ) = I B ( Dswitch , P ) exp 1 P (T ) + 2 a irr D Dswitch + AD eff ( P2 ) P2 a (Tirr ) 1 exp P (T ) 2 a irr

(6b) at D > Dswitch Fig.3 exhibits the results of switched dose rate simulation

Fig. 4a Simulated dose degradation under electric switching. A set of fitting parameters with rather typical values are used for simulation: Tirr = 300K; P = 0.06 rad/s; a = 0.75 eV; a0 =10-7 s; Eox= 2104 and 2105 V/cm; dox = 1.5 m; p= 0.39 eV;

Fig. 3 Simulated dose degradation (normalized to fit the LM139 data in Refs. [12, 13]) under dose rate switched to low value at switching doses Dswitch = 0 krad, 10 krad, 31 krad and 84 krad. A set of fitting parameters with rather typical values are used for simulation: Tirr = 300K; a = 0.75 eV, a0 =10-7 s; Eox= 6 104 V/cm; dox = 1.5 m; p= 0.39 eV;

with Eq. 6, where irradiation conditions are close to the experiments described in Ref. ([12] [13]). We have obtained good qualitative and quantitative agreement with experiment both in linear and saturation region of the curves at fitting parameters presented in capture of Fig. 3. It is curious that fitted parameter a ( 0.75 eV) turns out to be close to annealing activation energy found above from independent data. This suggests an idea to interpret the degradation saturation as result of simultaneous time-dependent annealing in contrast to authors of Refs. [12,13] and [14] explaining saturation by circuit-level effects. B. Electric switching during irradiation Saturation of degradation level depends also on electric field in the oxides. This particularly implies a possibility of degradation annealing under switching from high to low values of electric fields during irradiation due to a lesser charge yield in Eq.5 at lower Eox. This effect is simulated in Fig.4a. Similar simultaneous annealing under electric conditions switchings during irradiation was observed experimentally in [15] (see Fig.4b).

Fig. 4b Base current degradation and annealing during irradiation under electric switchings. Taken from Ref. [15] (Fig. 10).

C. Experimental validation of the model To verify described above model we irradiated the LM111JG (Texas Instruments) comparator using 45 keV Xray source [16] at different dose rates and irradiation temperatures. The comparators were biased under 15 V with both grounded inputs during irradiation. First device was irradiated at 20 rad/s and room temperature up to 120 krad. Second device was irradiated at the same room temperature, with dose rate 0.1 rad/s. The third sample was irradiated under dose rate 20 rad/s at irradiation temperature T = 125 oC. All measurements were performed at room temperature on each step. The results are shown in Fig. 5. As shown in this figure, the input currents as functions of dose follow almost linear dependencies IB (D) IB0 + a D with the fitting parameters a = 0.49 nA/krad (20 rad/s, room temperature), a = 1.34 nA/krad (0.1 rad/s, room temperature), and a = 5.7 nA/krad for linear part of the dependence at elevated temperature (20 rad/s, 125 C).

RADECS 2010 Proceedings - [SP5-2]

alternative method that seems to be evidence of annealinginduced nature of degradation saturation. IV. POSSIBLE APPLICATIONS Proposed model allows in principle to predict bipolar devices behavior under low-dose-rate irradiation and to correctly select equivalent accelerated test conditions. Knowing the model parameters one may to compute enhancement factor as functions of dose rate at variety of irradiation conditions. Figs. 6 show up two of conceivable strategies for accelerated tests at different temperature irradiation and different doses. The former is expected to be sensitive to annealing parameters due to unavoidable simultaneous recombination centers decay at long-term irradiation at extremely low dose rate. This anticipated degradation lowering at dose rate typically < 10-3 rad/s demands surely direct experimental confirmation but as a matter of fact represents an immediate consequence of early experimental data in Figs.1a and 2a. That is why characterization of defect annealing is a necessary and crucial point for non-conservative degradation assessment based on irradiation at elevated temperatures. The latter approach is illustrated in Fig.6b and based on a use of the overtest dose factor (see, for example, [1]) and expected to be insensitive to annealing parameters at least at room irradiation temperature. Combinations of the considered

Fig. 5. Input current of LM111JG as functions of dose measured for different dose rates and irradiation temperatures

The slopes of linear dose dependencies for room temperature irradiation at different dose rate (0.1 and 20 rad/s) can be easily simulated with a set of fitting constants (Eox~ 5 104 V/cm, a0 =10-7 s, dox ~ 1 m, with ordinary values typical for field oxides. We have conjectured that degradation saturation may be caused by simultaneous thermally-activated annealing. Timedependent annealing is characterized by experimental saturation time tsat and corresponding saturation dose which is
1.000 0.500

Tirr = 20 C

Degradation , a.u.

0.100 0.050

Tirr = 100 C
0.010 0.005

0.001 10-5

0.00034 rad/s
0.001

0.4 rad/s

94 rad/s
10

Fig.6a. Illustration of the elevated temperature method: Recalculated unnormalized enhancement factor dose rate dependencies at 40 krad and different irradiation temperatures (20 oC and 100 oC) for the NPN BJT with extracted parameters presented in the Table V. On-orbit operating mean temperature and expected dose rate value should be utilized for equivalent condition revealing followed by experimental check-up at intermediate dose. rates.

Dose Rate, rds

0.1

Fig.6b. Illustration of the overtest irradiation method: The recalculated enhancement factor for the PNP BJT (with parameters from the Table VI) as functions of dose rate as function of dose rate and at different doses 20, 40 and 100 krad. This method is practically insensitive to accompanying annealing but is expected to be affected by nonlinearity of dose dependencies at high (approximately > 50 krad) doses.

described in our model as Dsat = P a 0 exp ( a / k BTirr ) . Taking

two approaches are also possible. V. LIMITATIONS AND UNRESOLVED PROBLEMS The electric bias regime during irradiation remains beyond the scope of this paper. It is known that input current degradation can be affected by electric regime under irradiation. Particularly, it has been found in [14] that qualitative and quantitative behavior of degradation at

Dsat 60 krad in Fig. 5, P = 20 rad/s, and a 0 =10 s (as always in this work) we have found an activation energy D a = k BTirr ln sat 0.83 eV P a 0
-7

very close to the annealing activation energy ( a = 0.8 eV) obtained above from the independent data and by the

RADECS 2010 Proceedings - [SP5-2]

saturation is strongly affected by whether pins were grounded or not under irradiation. We think that this may be determined by non-linear effect of gradual decreasing of internal electric fields accompanying by corresponding lowering of charge yield. We have also neglected here the time-dependent effects connected with possible delay of interface traps (recombination centers) buildup which is limited temporally by quite slow processes of transport of hydrogen species [17] and/or near-interfacial defect configuration transformation. Self-consisted extraction of full set of the model parameters for simultaneous and accurate description of multiple and dissimilar experimental curves also represents a serious problem. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors thank A.V. Sogoyan, V.V. Emelianov, V.S. Pershenkov, M.S. Gorbunov for fruitful discussions and I.A. Gorbachev for technical support.

[12] J. Boch, F. Saign, R. D. Schrimpf, D. M. Fleetwood, S. Ducret, L. Dusseau, J. P. David, J. Fesquet, J. Gasiot, and R. Ecoffet, Effect of switching from high to low dose rate on linear bipolar technology radiation response, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 50, pp. 28962902, Oct. 2004. [13] J. Boch, Y. G. Velo, F. Saign, N. J.-H. Roche, R. D. Schrimpf, J. - R. Vaill, L. Dusseau, C. Chatry, E. Lorfvre, R. Ecoffet, and A. D. Touboul, The Use of a Dose-Rate Switching Technique to Characterize Bipolar Devices, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 56, pp. 33473353, Dec. 2009. [14 ] L. Dusseau, M. Bernard, J. Boch, Y. G. Velo, N. J.-H. Roche, E. Lorfvre, F. Bezerra, P. Calvel, R. Marec, and F. Saign, Review and analysis of the radiation induced degradation observed on the input bias current of linear integrated circuits, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol. 55, pp.31743181, 2008. [15]V.S. Pershenkov, V.B. Maslov, S.V.Cherepko et al. The Effect of Emitter Junction Bias on the Low Dose-Rate Radiation Response of Bipolar Devices, IEEE Trans. on Nuclear Science, Vol. 44, No. 6, pp. 1840-1848, Dec. 1997. [16] A. S. Artamonov, A. I. Chumakov, N. V. Eremin, V. S. Figurov, O. A. Kalashnikov, A. Y. Nikiforov, A. V. Sogoyan, REIS-IE X-ray Tester: Description, Qualification Technique and Results, Dosimetry Procedure, IEEE Radiation Effects Data Workshop Record, 1998, pp. 164-169. [17] F.B. McLean, A framework for understanding radiation-induced interface states in SiO2 MOS structures, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci., vol.27 , p.1651, 1980.

REFERENCES
[1] R. L. Pease, R. D. Schrimpf and D. M. Fleetwood, ELDRS in Bipolar Linear Circuits: A Review, IEEE Trans. on Nucl. Sci., Vol. 56, No. 4, pp. 1894-1908, August 2009. [2] G.I. Zebrev, Modeling and Simulation of Enhanced Low-Dose-Rate Sensitivity of Thick Isolating Layers in Advanced ICs, Russian Microelectronics, V.35, no. 3, pp. 209-216, 2006. [3] G.I. Zebrev, D.Y. Pavlov et al. Radiation Response of Bipolar Transistors at Various Irradiation Temperatures and Electric Biases: Modeling and Experiment, IEEE Trans. on Nuclear Science, Vol. 53, No. 4, pp. 19811987, August 2006. This paper based on the report to RADECS 2005. [4] G.I. Zebrev, M.S. Gorbunov, Modeling of Radiation-Induced Leakage and Low Dose-Rate Effects in Thick Edge Isolation of Modern MOSFETs IEEE Trans. on Nuclear Science, Vol. 56, No. 4, pp. 22302236, August 2009. [5] A. H. Johnston, C. J. B.G. Rax, Testing and Qualifying Linear Integrated Circuits for Radiation Degradation in Space, RADECS 2005 Proceed. [6] C.C. Yui, S.S. McClure, B. G. Rax, Total Dose Dependency and ELDRS Effects on Bipolar Linear Devices, 2002. [7] S.S. McClure, J.L. Gorelick, C.C. Yui, B.G. Rax, Continuing evaluation of bipolar linear devices for total dose dependency and ELDRS effects, 2003, IEEE Radiation Effects Data Workshop. [8] A.H. Johnston, C.I. Lee., B.G. Rax, Enhanced Damage in Bipolar Devices at Low Dose Rates: Effects at Very Low Dose Rates, IEEE Trans. Nuc1. Sci,. Vol. 43, No.6, p. 3049-3059, 1996. [9] S.C. Witczak, R. D. Schrimpf, D. M. Fleetwood et al. "Hardness Assurance Testing of Bipolar Junction Transistors at Elevated Irradiation Temperatures", IEEE Trans. on Nuclear Science, Vol. 44, No. 6, pp. 1989-2000, 1997. [10] S. C. Witczak, R. D. Schrimpf, K.F. Galloway, D. M. Fleetwood, R. L. Pease, J. M. Puhl, D. M. Schmidt, W. E. Combs, and J. S. Suehle, Accelerated Tests for Simulating Low Dose Rate Gain Degradation of Lateral and Substrate PNP Bipolar Junction Transistors, IEEE Trans. Nuc1. Sci. 43, 3151 (1996). [11] D. M. Fleetwood, S. L. Miller, R. A. Reber, Jr., P. J. McWhorter, P. S. Winokur, M. R. Shaneyfelt, and J. R. Schwank, New Insights into Radiation-Induced Oxide-Trap Charge Through Thermally-StimulatedCurrent Measurement and Analysis, IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. 39, p. 2192, 1992.