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Heuristic Detection of the Most Vulnerable Regions in Electronic Devices for Radiation Survivability


 As electronic systems become larger and more complex, detection of the most vulnerable regions (MVR) to radiation exposure becomes more difficult and time consuming. We present a heuristic approach where the mechanical and thermal aspects of devices are exploited to quickly identify the MVR. Our approach involves the topological mapping of two device conditions. The first identifies regions with the highest mechanical strain or density of defects and interfaces. This is achieved by probing the device with thermal waves and constructing a phase lag map of re-emitted thermal radiation without any electrical biasing. The second identifies regions with the highest electrical field. It is hypothesized that the region with the highest thermal wave penetration resistance and electrical field will also exhibit the highest sensitivity to incoming radiation for single events and potentially, total ionizing dose. Our approach implements a simplistic experimental design that improves analysis time by about 2-3 orders of magnitude over current radiation sensitivity mapping methods. The design is demonstrated on the well-studied operational amplifier LM124, which shows very good agreement with the literature. This is followed by experimental results on a static random access memory (HM-6504) and a Xilinx Artix-7 35T system on a chip.