High total dose gamma radiation assessment of commercially available SiGe Heterojunction Bipolar Transistors

Marco Van Uffelen, Sam Geboers, Paul Leroux, Francis Berghmans

    Research outputpeer-review

    Abstract

    Maintenance tasks of the future International Experimental Thermonuclear fusion Reactor (ITER) will require communication links between the remotely operated equipment in the reactor vessel and the control room, some of which need to be radiation tolerant up to MGy dose levels. As a key element of opto-electronic transceivers, we therefore assessed the DC behavior of a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) SiGe heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) under gamma radiation up to 15 MGy, with dose rates from 160 Gy/h to 27 kGy/h. Our in-situ measurements of the forward DC current gain (hfe) present a limited loss of about 30% for a base current of 100 μA, with a dependence on the biasing conditions and a thermally activated recovery. These first ever reported results up to MGy levels allow us to design circuit-hardened driving electronics for both photonic transmitters and receivers, enabling high bandwidth communications applied in a fusion reactor environment.

    Original languageEnglish
    Title of host publicationProceedings of SPIE
    Subtitle of host publicationPhotonics for Space Environments X
    Place of PublicationBellingham, United States
    Pages1-14
    Number of pages14
    Volume5897
    DOIs
    StatePublished - 2005
    EventPhotonics for Space Environments X - SPIE, Bellingham
    Duration: 25 Aug 200525 Aug 2005

    Publication series

    NameProceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering
    PublisherSPIE - Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers
    ISSN (Print)0277-786X

    Conference

    ConferencePhotonics for Space Environments X
    Country/TerritoryUnited States
    CityBellingham
    Period2005-08-252005-08-25

    ASJC Scopus subject areas

    • Electronic, Optical and Magnetic Materials
    • Condensed Matter Physics
    • Computer Science Applications
    • Applied Mathematics
    • Electrical and Electronic Engineering

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