Radiation hardened CMOS technology

Radiation hardened CMOS technology by design

Imec.IC-link supports radiation-hardened design platforms using layout and circuit design techniques applied to existing commercial foundry technology. Our platforms are called DARE: Design Against Radiation Effects. DARE provides a cost-effective, complementary, flexible alternative to the limited number of low-volume foundries manufacturing ASICs in intrinsically radiation-hard technology.

Application areas

• Space
• Avionics
• High energy physics
• Medical

Specifications

We support DARE platforms for commercial technology in different nodes from different foundries. The DARE platform with the highest level of support is currently based on 0.18 um UMC technology and is compatible with the Logic, Mixed-Mode RF and the CIS (imager) technology flavors.

Building blocks

• Digital core standard cells
• Integrated clock gating cells
• I/O cells (including 5 Volt tolerant inputs, pull-up/down, etc.) with 4KV HBM ESD hardness and dual bond capability. Pad sizes can be customer-defined.
• Low-voltage differential signaling
• (LVDS) I/O cells
• Phase-locked loops (PLL)
• Single and Dual-port Random Access Memory (RAM)
• Band gap voltage references
• Analog to Digital converters (ADCs)
• Digital to Analog Converters (DACs)
• Low Drop-Out (LDO) regulators

Imec.IC-link has built up a lot of experience in the field of space evaluation (ESCC2269000) and qualification (ESCC9000). The hardware required to screen the Flight Modules, such as test load boards, packages & sockets are developed and customized for each customer project.