Effects of Defects and Impurities in Starting Material on Radiation Hardness of CMOS/SOS Devices

Some of the relationships between defects and impurities in SOS starting materials and the radiation hardness of CMOS/SOS devices have been investigated. It is shown that a direct correlation exists between contaminants in the epitaxial silicon film and the radiation-induced back-channel leakage currents. Radiation-induced shifts in device threshold voltage were observed, but these shifts appeared to be more closely related to variations in device processing than to silicon film contamination.