Radiation Effects in Semiconductor Devices

Ionising radiation interacts with semiconductor materials through two principal mechanisms: cumulative ionisation and displacement damage. The former, often quantified as total ionising dose (TID), leads to the build-up of trapped charge in oxide layers and at dielectric interfaces, resulting in threshold-voltage shifts, increased leakage currents and eventual functional failure. Displacement damage, induced by non-ionising energy transfer, creates lattice defects that degrade carrier lifetimes and mobility, undermining device performance. In addition to these gradual effects, single-event effects (SEEs) arise from individual high-energy particles inducing transient currents or bit-flips, which can cascade into system-level errors. Modern device architectures—such as silicon-on-insulator (SOI) and fully depleted SOI (FDSOI)—offer inherent resilience by isolating active regions from bulk substrates, yet they present unique challenges in buried-oxide charge trapping and interface state formation. As the semiconductor industry pursues ever-smaller geometries, thinner gate dielectrics and novel materials such as wide-bandgap silicon carbide, the sensitivity to radiation can both decrease (through reduced oxide volumes) and increase (through enhanced charge-collection efficiency). The global significance of these effects spans space missions, nuclear energy systems, high-energy physics experiments and safety-critical medical electronics. Mitigation strategies now combine radiation-hardening-by-design, process engineering and comprehensive test methodologies to ensure reliability in the harshest environments.

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Radiation Effects in Semiconductor Devices publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in radiation effects in semiconductor devices across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Total Ionizing Dose (TID): The cumulative energy deposited in a material by ionising radiation, leading to trapped charge and oxide degradation.

Single-Event Effects (SEEs): Non-cumulative disturbances caused by individual energetic particles, including transients and logic upsets.

Random Telegraph Noise (RTN): Discrete, stochastic fluctuations in current due to charge capture and emission at a single defect site.

Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS): Readily available electronic components not originally designed for radiation hardness.

Silicon-On-Insulator (SOI): A semiconductor substrate comprising a thin active silicon layer separated from the bulk by a buried oxide layer.

References

1. Spatially resolved random telegraph fluctuations of a single trap at the Si/SiO2 interface. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2024).
2. COTS Devices for Space Missions in LEO. IEEE Access (2024).
3. Simulation of Total Ionizing Dose (TID) Effects Mitigation Technique for 22 nm Fully-Depleted Silicon-on-Insulator (FDSOI) Transistor. IEEE Access (2020).