Affordable RadHard Components a Modified Foundry Away Published Sept. 11, 2009 By Eva Blaylock Space Vehicles KIRTLAND AIR FORCE BASE, New Mexico -- Absolutely integral to Department of Defense space missions, radiation-hardened electronics technology just got a little less costly to manufacture on a large-scale basis. The advance comes with Air Force Research Laboratory's demonstration of an innovative technique for modifying a high-volume, commercial microcircuit foundry to produce RadHard microcircuits at high yield and reduced cost. The lab's unconventional architectural approach conceived, advocated--and newly demonstrated--for this effort will enable the DoD to exploit state-of-the-art commercial processes without having to build cost-prohibitive facilities exclusive to military-specific processes. Lowering production costs by millions of dollars, AFRL's successfully validated technique is minimally invasive in terms of its impact on the commercial process and is therefore acceptable to the foundry. The modification incorporates the facility's use of a thoroughly tested 16 Mbit static random access memory technology that offers the highest performance and greatest radiation tolerance of any 16 Mbit SRAM available today. By otherwise leveraging the software, development systems, and application support of the commercial vendor, the technique paves the way for affordable RadHard versions of commercially produced microcircuits. Easily applied both to new microcircuit designs and to existing components, the technique uses high-energy implants to create structures that not only prevent latch-up, but significantly improve total ionizing dose hardness and single-event effects caused by exposure to ionized particles in space. The method also enhances, by a factor of 5-10, the upset level for parts subjected to the ionizing-dose-rate environments associated with nuclear weapons. Application of this modification technique can assure the availability and affordability of advanced semiconductor products from onshore foundries with minimal investment by the government. Further, the resultant products can be reasonably expected to have greater reliability than parts produced in low-volume, custom foundries. As a breakthrough technology with the potential to assure continued dominance of US military electronic systems, RadHard electronics constitutes one of AFRL's top research and development interests. The lab's technical breadth and depth uniquely position it to anticipate needs and spawn novel solutions to some of the technology's more difficult challenges. The electronic subsystems of virtually every DoD spacecraft--and a number of commercial space vehicles as well--have a heritage rooted in AFRL's ongoing intellectual leadership and core competency in the critical area of RadHard electronics.