Radiation hardening
act of making electronic components and systems resistant to damage or malfunctions caused by ionizing radiation (particle radiation and high-energy electromagnetic radiation)
In electronics engineering and computer science, radiation hardening is the process of making electronic components and computer systems resistant to damage or malfunction caused by high levels of ionizing radiation (particle radiation and high-energy electromagnetic radiation), especially for environments in outer space (especially beyond low Earth orbit), around nuclear reactors and particle accelerators, or during nuclear accidents or nuclear warfare.
Modern computer systems are based on microprocessors, which are integrated circuits manufactured as semiconductor devices. These components are susceptible to radiation damage, and radiation-hardened (rad-hard) components are based on their non-hardened equivalents, with some design and manufacturing variations that reduce the susceptibility to radiation damage. Due to the low demand and the extensive development and testing required to produce a radiation-tolerant design of a microelectronic chip, the technology of radiation-hardened chips tends to lag behind the most recent developments. They also typically cost more than their commercial counterparts.
Radiation-hardened products are typically tested to one or more resultant-effects tests, including total ionizing dose (TID), enhanced low dose rate effects (ELDRS), neutron and proton displacement damage, and single event effects (SEEs).
Challenges
Environments with high levels of ionizing radiation create special design challenges. A single charged particle can knock thousands of electrons loose, causing electronic noise and signal spikes. In the case of digital circuits, this can cause results which are inaccurate or unintelligible. This is a particularly serious problem in the design of satellites, spacecraft, future quantum computers, military aircraft, nuclear power stations, and nuclear weapons.
“Radiation hardening” enters the record as act of making electronic components and systems resistant to damage or malfunctions caused by ionizing radiation (particle radiation and high-energy electromagnetic radiation). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Radiation, hardening and making can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Radiation hardening” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.