The increasing use of integrated circuits with dimensions in the order of tens of nanometres which are being integrated into more and more digital devices are now more susceptible to faults, known as Single Event Effects (SEE). An SEE occurs when an energetic particle passes through sensitive regions within an electronic device.
SEE pose a threat to atmospheric based technology such as aircraft and particularly sensitive ground based microelectronics, and also space based technology and human space flight.
Any energetic particle can cause a SEE, with high energy protons being the predominant cause in space, and both protons and neutrons within the atmosphere.
Obviously, the impact and occurrence of such SEEs need to be designed out of any critical electronic system. A typical such process would involve a combination of theoretical simulation (see link) and experimental testing. It is common to perform such testing at heavy-ion and fast proton and neutron beam facilities. Such facilities can help determine the susceptibility of a device to different energy particles, with typical fast proton/neutron energy ranges of 50 to 500MeV. From this, a device cross-section may be obtained.
However, many of these facilities are extremely expensive and/or impractical to use for many applications due to for instance, size limitations. In addition, it is desirable to test at lower energies below 20MeV.
Our lab will be able to supply this additional data, providing data points at 2.5MeV and 14MeV respectively. These data points can be vital in characterizing the potentially sharp critical energy for the electronic device.
In addition, our testing serivces will be able to uniformly irradiate large areas, allowing large system tests to be performed on top of any smaller component based test that is required.
Another advantage of our lab is the ability to very rapidly start and stop the testing, allowing rapid interchange of device, geometry or shielding, with the added ability to accurately control the flux to avoid possible unwanted dose rate effects to the device.
Further, the geometry of our test setups allow multiple electronic devices to be irradiated concurrently, thus allowing effective batch testing and removing possible environmental differences that could occur with longer time scale, serial testing of components.
We would like to invite you now to contact us to describe your specific needs. As we move toward establishing our laboratory, we would like know what kind of set up would best suite your testing needs in order for us to establish the most convenient and affordable SEE testing services available.
June, 2010 - RE-Labs partners with Red Valley Technology Ltd who will expand RE-Labs' offerings via their bespoke test bed hardware and software technology.
May, 2010 - Discussions begin with several local universities regarding the location of RE-Labs.
April, 2010 - www.re-labs.com goes online
March, 2010 - NSD-Fusion GmbH partners with RE-Labs as provider of the neutron generator technology that will drive the SEE testing services.