Total ionizing dose effects in 130-nm commercial CMOS technologies for HEP experiments

The impact of foundry-to-foundry variability and bias conditions during irradiation on the Total Ionizing Dose (TID) response of commercial 130-nm CMOS technologies have been investigated for applications in High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments. n- and p-channel MOSFETs from three different manufacturers have been irradiated with X-rays up to more than 100 Mrad (SiO2). Even though the effects of TID are qualitatively similar, the amount of degradation is shown to vary considerably from foundry to foundry, probably depending on the processing of the STI oxide and/or doping profile in the substrate. The bias during irradiation showed to have a strong impact as well on the TID response, proving that exposure at worst case bias conditions largely overestimates the degradation a device may experience during its lifetime. Overall, our results increase the confidence that 130-nm CMOS technologies can be used in future HEP experiments even without Hardness-By-Design solutions, provided that constant monitoring of the radiation response is carried out during the full manufacturing phase of the circuits.