Seminar Description: Radiation environments pose significant challenges for power electronics, introducing effects and failure mechanisms not normally considered. Key environments include medical facilities, where X-ray machines and radiation therapy equipment expose devices to ionizing photons and electrons. Nuclear power plants present additional hazards, with gamma rays, neutrons, and beta particles encountered during operations or accidents. Research facilities, such as particle accelerators, expose electronics to high-energy protons, pions, and secondary particles generated in collisions. Space radiation presents unique difficulties, as electronics in satellites and spacecraft must withstand cosmic rays, solar particle events, and trapped protons, electrons, and heavy ions in radiation belts. Other settings include industrial processes involving radioactive materials and environmental monitoring stations.
This seminar will provide a broad introduction to radiation effects on semiconductor power devices and circuits. Topics include the range of radiation environments, particles such as photons, electrons, protons, and cosmic rays, and their impacts on different semiconductors. We will address degradation and failures from total ionizing dose damage, dislocation damage, and single-event effects. The seminar will highlight why wide-bandgap devices offer greater resilience in some cases, and how testing is conducted using specialized facilities matched to specific mechanisms. Results from select studies will also be presented.
