Radiation-Hardened Cells for Analog Design: Comprehensive Review and Design Flow

An in-depth review of radiation-hardened (Rad-Hard) cells for advanced CMOS integrated circuit design is presented. The diamond style, the I-gate and the enclosed gate layout schemes are discussed, focusing on the design challenges that each layout style addresses. Furthermore, a radiation-hardened by design (RHBD) methodology is proposed which can be seamlessly integrated into the standard design flow. The proposed methodology enables the development of an OA library with radiation-hardened pcells, which can be exploited not only in the layout phase but also in the schematic phase, having precise models coupled to specific layout views.