Radiation Hardened by Design vs HARDSIL® Technology

Patrice Parris, Ph.D., Chief Technology Officer, VORAGO Technologies
May 7, 2024

Radiation Hardening Techniques for Semiconductors: What You Need to Know

In the aerospace and defense industries, the reliability of semiconductors and electronic components is non-negotiable. For example, microcontroller units (MCUs) that are used for mission critical applications must operate dependably under extreme conditions, including high radiation environments.

Space radiation and other extreme conditions can have a catastrophic effect on an integrated circuit (IC). Multiple methods, commonly referred to as radiation hardening, are used to ensure the protection of ICs, including microcontrollers. These methods are usually classified as either Radiation Hardened by Design (RHBD) or Radiation Hardened by Process (RHBP). Both RHBD and RHBP involve designing chips to be inherently resistant to radiation effects right from the initial design phase. Understanding the differences between RHBD and RHBP can help guide your selection in a microcontroller vendor.

What is Radiation Hardening for Semiconductors?

Radiation hardening for semiconductors refers to the process of designing and manufacturing these electronic components to withstand and operate reliably in environments with high levels of ionizing radiation. Radiation, such as gamma rays, X-rays, and cosmic rays, can disrupt the operation of semiconductor devices by causing ionization and damaging their electronic components. Radiation hardening techniques aim to mitigate the effects of radiation on semiconductors to ensure the continued functionality and reliability of electronic systems.

Who Does Radiation Hardening Benefit?

Radiation hardening of semiconductors is beneficial across a range of industries and applications, particularly in aerospace, military, and space applications where exposure to radiation is common. In these industries, rad hard MCUs are essential to a variety of applications that deploy local intelligence in a subsystem.

What is Radiation Hardening by Design (RHBD)?

The RHBD approach typically begins by altering the structure of the standard foundry devices and then couples that with architectural changes that enhance radiation tolerance to create a rad-tolerant or rad-hard microcontroller.

What is Radiation Hardening by Process (RHBP)?

RHBP involves the use of a specific manufacturing flow and/or a substrate to protect the foundry devices from radiation effects. A premier example of this approach is VORAGO’s proprietary HARDSIL® technology, which is our unique, patented Radiation Hardened by Process (RHBP) solution.

What is HARDSIL® Technology?

In contrast to traditional Radiation Hardened by Design (RHBD) approaches that attempt to alter the circuit components themselves, HARDSIL® builds protective structures around the components to ensure both the reliability and efficiency without compromise. This innovative structural shielding is the defining characteristic of VORAGO’s unique, patented Radiation Hardened by Process (RHBP) technology. Instead of compromising efficiency, HARDSIL creates highly conductive regions connected to ground that shield the device without incurring power or area penalties.

By comparison to rigid RHBD methods, HARDSIL achieves elite rad-hard performance without forcing engineers to embed extra architectures into the semiconductor design. As a premier RHBP technique, HARDSIL inherently reduces manufacturing costs and power consumption while delivering enhanced performance and a significantly more compact die size.

Implemented directly at the foundry level, this foundational RHBP innovation unique to VORAGO enables users to design and produce radiation-hardened microprocessors and microcontrollers much faster and more cost-effectively than alternative methods. Today, VORAGO leverages HARDSIL to deliver highly reliable, rad-hard MCUs with proven flight heritage across a diverse range of orbital mission profiles including our VA10805 MCUS (built on the Arm Cortex-M0 cores) and our VA41600, VA41620 and VA41630 flagship MCUs for deep space payloads (built on Arm Cortex-M4 cores). In fact VORAGO is a 100% Arm house.

Advantages of HARDSIL

HARDSIL is a patented technology which is cost-effective to install in a baseline process. HARDSIL re-uses existing baseline design collateral and foundry intellectual property (IP) to harden new IC designs as well as existing designs. It hardens existing designs without the expense of re-design. The resulting rad-hard ICs do not suffer area, power and design complexity penalties in comparison to the commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) version of the same IC while offering the same electrical performance. This is in contrast to the area, power and design time penalties often incurred with RHBD. VORAGO has used HARDSIL to create rad-hard MCUs with proven flight heritage in extreme environment operation. HARDSIL® is well suited for most space and defense applications, including those utilizing an edge computing microprocessor, and can prove especially advantageous where cost, flexibility, and time-to-market are critical considerations.

HARDSIL Rad-Hard MCUs

VORAGO’s portfolio of Arm® Cortex-M0 and M4 microcontrollers enable mission-critical technology to support the most demanding space applications, from heavy computing needs such as edge, to embedded controllers and I/O, while our extreme temperature solutions are ideal for industrial applications. VORAGO rad hard MCUs achieve “best in class” radiation performance with Total Ionizing Dose (TID) greater than 300 krad(Si) and Single-Event Latchup (SEL) LET threshold >110 MeVcm²/mg @ T=125°C.

To request more information on HARDSIL® and VORAGO’s rad hard MCUs, contact us.