The changes of DC characteristics of SiGe HBT after being submitted to γ-ray irradiation of 700 krad, 7 000 krad and 10 000 krad were compared to those of Si BJT. Generally speaking, Ib and Ib- Ib0 increase with the doses increasing. For SiGe HBT, with the doses increasing, Ic and Ic-Ic0 as well as the related changes of the current gain (β) will decrease at higher Vbe, while for Si BJT, with the doses increasing, after irradiation, Ib and Ic-Ic0 increase; ,8 and its related changes also decrease with their differences, however, tending to be very small at high doses of 7 000 krad and 10 000 krad. Moreover, given the same doses, the decreases of,a are much larger than SiGe HBT, which shows that SiGe HBT's anti-radiation performance proves to be better than Si BJT. Still, in SiGe HBT, some strange phenomena were observed: Ic-Ic0 will increase after the radiation of 7 000 krad in less than 0.65 V and as will ,8 in less than 0.75 V. The mechanism of radiation-induced change in DC characteristies was also discussed.
MENG Xiang-tiHUANG QianWANG Ji linCHEN Pei-yiTSIEN Pei-hsin
Changes of the average brightness and non-uniformity of dark output images,and quality of pictures captured under natural lighting for the color CMOS digital image sensorsirradiated at different electron doses have been studied in comparison to those from theγ-irradiated sensors. For the electron-irradiated sensors, the non-uniformity increases obviouslyand a small bright region on the dark image appears at the dose of 0.4 kGy. The average brightnessincreases at 0.4 kGy, increases sharply at 0.5 kGy. The picture is very blurry only at 0.6 kGy,showing the sensor undergoes severe performance degradation. Electron radiation damage is much moresevere than γ radiation damage for the CMOS image sensors. A possible explanation is presented inthis paper.
The 9 and 12 MeV proton irradiations of the Chinese CMOS Image Sensor in the fluence range from 1× 10^9 to 4×10^10 cm^-2 and 1 × 10^9 to 2×10^12 cm^-2 have been carried out respectively. The color pictures and dark output images are captured, and the average brightness of dark output images is calculated. The anti-irradiation fluence thresholds for 9 and 12 MeV protons are about 4×10^l0 and 2×10^12 cm^-2, respectively. These can be explained by the change of the concentrations of irradiation-induced electron-hole pairs and vacancies in the various layers of CMOS image sensor calculated by the TRIM simulation program.
The change of electrical performances of 1 MeV electron irradiated silicon-germanium (SiGe) heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) and Si bipolar junction transistor (BJT) was studied. After electron irradiation, both the collector current IC and the base current IB changed a little, and the current gain β decreased a little for SiGe HBT. The higher the electron irradiation fluence was, the lower the IC decreased. For conventional Si BJT, IC and IB increased as well as /? decreased much larger than SiGe HBT under the same fluence. The contribution of IB was more important to the degradation of β for both SiGe HBT and Si BJT. It was shown that SiGe HBT had a larger anti-radiation threshold and better anti-radiation performance than Si BJT. The mechanism of electrical performance changes induced by irradiation was preliminarily discussed.
The quality of dark output images from the CMOS (complementarymetal oxide semiconductor) black and white (B & W) digital imagesensors captured before and after γ-ray irradiation was studied. Thecharacteristic parameters of the dark output images captured atdifferent radiation dose, e.g. average brightness and itsnon-uniformity of dark out- put images, were analyzed by our testsoftware. The primary explanation for the change of the parameterswith the radi- ation dose was given.
MENG Xiangti and KANG A iguo Institute of Nuclear Energy Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China