Rad-Hard ICs

Physics / mechanism

Rad-hard ICs are semiconductor devices engineered to tolerate ionising radiation environments — space, nuclear reactors, particle accelerators, medical imaging systems. Radiation damage manifests via two mechanisms: total ionising dose (TID), cumulative charge trapping in gate oxides that shifts threshold voltages and degrades leakage; and single-event effects (SEEs), transient ionisation from heavy ions or protons causing bit-flips (SEU), latch-up (SEL), or destructive burnout (SEB). Hardening approaches: radiation-hardened-by-process (RHBP) using specialised oxide growth and bipolar processes; radiation-hardened-by-design (RHBD) using enclosed-gate FETs, guard rings, TMR logic. State-of-the-art TID tolerance reaches 1 Mrad(Si); SEE LET thresholds above 80 MeV·cm²/mg are achievable. Key fabs: BAE Systems MicroElectronics, Microchip (Atmel), TSMC radiation-qualified flows, and GlobalFoundries’ 22FDX with emerging RHBD libraries.

Competitive landscape

Competing and adjacent approaches split along cost-vs-assurance axes. COTS-with-shielding is the low-cost fallback for LEO smallsats but adds mass and offers no SEE mitigation. FPGAs with scrubbing (Xilinx Kintex Rad, Microchip RTG4) compete for reconfigurable workloads. SiGe BiCMOS offers inherent TID resilience and dominates RF/mixed-signal rad-hard niches.

Investment relevance

Companies using

Connected ideas

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Frontier (open questions)

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