Abstract
Electronic devices used in many space, military, accelerator and nuclear power plants systems may be exposed to Total Ionizing Dose. These critical sectors need strict operational assurance, requiring the qualification of components and systems. Cobalt-60 is the most common radiation source used for total ionizing dose testing of electronic components. In order to perform TID testing at system-level (for an entire electronic board or system) or for screening, we propose the use of a high-energy X-ray generator with voltage up to 320kV allowing us to obtain photons up to 320keV. Due to its continuous spectrum, X-rays have low-energy photons with photoelectric effect. Low energy photons have a low penetration depth but have a significant impact on the absorbed dose due to the variability of the mass energy-absorption coefficients depending on the atomic number Z of the materials. These conditions are far from optimal for component testing where the goal is to achieve a high penetration depth and an energy deposition that does not depend on the Z of the material. This is the reason why we have decided to cut the low energy photons. This cut is realized with a lead filter. In order to provide some answers, references of generic MOSFETs, BJT, RADfet, DSP FDSOI and custom MOS capacitors have been irradiated within 3 conditions: 60-Co irradiation, X-ray irradiation with Al filter, and X-ray irradiation with Al + Pb filter. The results show that high-energy X-rays offer an alternative that is faster, cheaper and with easier safety issues than cobalt-60. The higher the energy of the x-ray generator, the closer the results are to cobalt-60, and this gap is further reduced by the use of a lead filter.