Dipartimento di Fisica

We present ANSTO -precision testing of advanced functional electronic devices: the SIRIUS nuclear microprobe, the ANTARES heavy-ion external microprobe, and the synchrotron XRF beamline. As examples we will present test results obtained with i) SOI based devices for radiation dosimetry at the cellular scale (microdosimeters), ii) radiation-hardened SRAM chips
fabricated in CMOS technology, and ii) commercial off the shelf ICs.

Ion Beam Induced Charge (IBIC) microscopy has been used as the indispensable accelerator technique the best possible radiation detection properties with sensitivity on a micrometre scale. We achieved close to ideal CCE equal to 1 with no cross-talk between neighbour sensitive volumes for the latest  generation of fully optimised 3D MEMS micro dosimeters, configured as arrays of individual cell-sized sensitive volumes based on P-N junctions, developed by the CMRP, University of Wollongong, and produced by the SINTEF.

The synchrotron light microbeam and the external ion microbeam irradiation have been used to determine TID for commercial off the shelf space applications. We discuss TID values obtained by ions and X-rays, and compare them with gamma rays, as well as variability between samples.

The high-precision scanning ion microbeam has been used for the study of Single Event Upset (SEU) in a custom-designed radiation-hardened SRAM chip with a novel memory cell architecture developed for applications in harsh radiation conditions including Earth orbits, space, and high-radiation high-energy terrestrial facilities. We present findings and compare radiation damage with observations from using COTS (non-hardened) SRAM chips.