Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RADNEXT (RADiation facility Network for the EXploration of effects for indusTry and research)
Berichtszeitraum: 2021-06-01 bis 2022-11-30
The main challenge that RADNEXT addresses is the access to accelerator and reactor infrastructure for advancing in the research of radiation effects on electronics. Such access is typically limited by the fact that large accelerator and reactor facilities are mainly devoted to research and applications in high-energy, nuclear and medical physics, amongst others. Therefore, with radiation effects being only an ancillary activity, meeting the increasing beam time demand of the radiation effects community is troublesome. Thus, the key motivation behind the RADNEXT project is that of guaranteeing a sustained and harmonized access to beam facilities for radiation effects users.
As an outcome of RADNEXT, our overall understanding of radiation effects on electronics is improved, which in turn enables the use of cutting edge microelectronic and photonic technologies in high reliability applications such as space, transport, IT infrastructure and high-energy physics and medical accelerators. With a society that increasingly relies on technology, the possibility of benefiting from the use of semiconductors of the most advanced level in applications with more demanding reliability requirements than consumer electronics opens the door to solutions of unprecedented societal benefit, such as (just to mention an example) artificial intelligence on-board satellite capacity for Earth observation activities.
In addition to ensuring a broad, sustained and diversified accelerator facility access for radiation effects testing, RADNEXT also addresses the challenge of relaxing the entry barrier to this multidisciplinary field, for research teams and companies that face this increasing need for the first (or one of the first) time. Indeed, an important number of research teams and companies are confronted with the challenge of needing to qualify electronics against radiation, and do not have sufficient knowledge and experience to independently tackle the need. In this sense, RADNEXT aims at providing a centralized entry point to the otherwise potentially overwhelming field of radiation effects procedures and facilities.
This point is addressed within RADNEXT both through the development of tools and definitions of guidelines for electronics testing applications and users, as well as through direct technical support to teams and companies that are newcomers in the radiation effects discipline, and/or that need specific guidance related to a particularly complex or demanding radiation effects research need. Likewise, RADNEXT strives at improving the awareness and knowledge of radiation effects across the various application domains to which it is related, notably through training and dissemination material, for instance in the form of online webinars. Moreover, the project has been very active with its outreach activities, mainly through exhibitor booths at conferences, as well as social media.
As an outcome of RADNEXT, our overall understanding of radiation effects on electronics is improved, which in turn enables the use of cutting edge microelectronic and photonic technologies in high reliability applications such as space, transport, IT infrastructure and high-energy physics and medical accelerators. With a society that increasingly relies on technology, the possibility of benefiting from the use of semiconductors of the most advanced level in applications with more demanding reliability requirements than consumer electronics opens the door to solutions of unprecedented societal benefit, such as (just to mention an example) artificial intelligence on-board satellite capacity for Earth observation activities.
In addition to ensuring a broad, sustained and diversified accelerator facility access for radiation effects testing, RADNEXT also addresses the challenge of relaxing the entry barrier to this multidisciplinary field, for research teams and companies that face this increasing need for the first (or one of the first) time. Indeed, an important number of research teams and companies are confronted with the challenge of needing to qualify electronics against radiation, and do not have sufficient knowledge and experience to independently tackle the need. In this sense, RADNEXT aims at providing a centralized entry point to the otherwise potentially overwhelming field of radiation effects procedures and facilities.
This point is addressed within RADNEXT both through the development of tools and definitions of guidelines for electronics testing applications and users, as well as through direct technical support to teams and companies that are newcomers in the radiation effects discipline, and/or that need specific guidance related to a particularly complex or demanding radiation effects research need. Likewise, RADNEXT strives at improving the awareness and knowledge of radiation effects across the various application domains to which it is related, notably through training and dissemination material, for instance in the form of online webinars. Moreover, the project has been very active with its outreach activities, mainly through exhibitor booths at conferences, as well as social media.
The work performed so far in RADNEXT has in first instance been devoted to the definition and establishment of a workflow enabling a user-friendly access to its transnational beamtime offer. The workflow consists mainly of the following steps: opening of call for proposals and collection of submissions; review of the proposals by the RADNEXT User Selection Panel and assignment of facility; scheduling and execution of the test campaign; transnational access report and publication of the related results. This workflow is mainly integrated in an online portal, utilized by the users submitting proposals, the TA Work Package leaders and User Selection Panel in charge of the review, as well as the facility coordinators, who need to confirm that accepted proposals assigned to their facility are compliant with the technical, access and safety requirements of each infrastructure.
Calls for beam time are opened for one calendar month, with a periodicity of 3 or 4 months. Throughout the first 6 calls for beamtime (1.5 years) RADNEXT TA received 148 proposals, out of which 86 were accepted (58% acceptance rate). All proposals at this stage have been assigned a facility, having resulted in the completion of 41 tests, with the remainder of the scheduled tests to be accomplished in 2023. Currently, the amount of beamtime assigned to facilities has reached 2600 hours and total number of tests executed amounts to more than 1300 hours. Out of the 148 received proposals, 46 (i.e. roughly one third) come from industry. A first summary of the tests results (i.e. as opposed to a thorough, complete test report) of experiments performed in the scope of the RADNEXT transnational access are provided by the users within 3 months of the completion of the tests, and are publicly available in the RADNEXT Zenodo community.
Moreover, a number of research activities based on experimental data retrieved through RADNEXT have already been presented in the NSREC and RADECS 2022 international radiation effects conferences, as well as in peer reviewed journals such as the IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science.
Calls for beam time are opened for one calendar month, with a periodicity of 3 or 4 months. Throughout the first 6 calls for beamtime (1.5 years) RADNEXT TA received 148 proposals, out of which 86 were accepted (58% acceptance rate). All proposals at this stage have been assigned a facility, having resulted in the completion of 41 tests, with the remainder of the scheduled tests to be accomplished in 2023. Currently, the amount of beamtime assigned to facilities has reached 2600 hours and total number of tests executed amounts to more than 1300 hours. Out of the 148 received proposals, 46 (i.e. roughly one third) come from industry. A first summary of the tests results (i.e. as opposed to a thorough, complete test report) of experiments performed in the scope of the RADNEXT transnational access are provided by the users within 3 months of the completion of the tests, and are publicly available in the RADNEXT Zenodo community.
Moreover, a number of research activities based on experimental data retrieved through RADNEXT have already been presented in the NSREC and RADECS 2022 international radiation effects conferences, as well as in peer reviewed journals such as the IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science.
In addition to the TA related activities described above, RADNEXT is also making significant progress in relation to its research program which, mainly through the recruitment of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers.
As to what concerns dosimetry and beam characterization activities, important progress has been achieved in the calibration against total ionizing dose (TID) of several multimode fibers, including a thorough analysis of the sensitivity dependence with parameters such as temperature or dose rate. These promising results will be used to improve the dosimetry capabilities and harmonization across the RADNEXT facility network.
Regarding emerging SEE testing challenges, RADNEXT’s progress has so far mainly focused on the evaluation of the irradiation response of several complex components, including FPGAs, microprocessors and systems-on-chip. Valuable methodological information will be derived from such results, which include also the benchmark of different radiation effects mitigation techniques. This work will be complemented by the foreseen activities related to performing irradiation experiments and qualification on higher levels of integration, such as board or box level.
As to what concerns cumulative effects, the main advancement has been achieved in relation to the use of x-ray TID testing as a more accessible and environmentally friendly solution when compared to the more classical cobalt-60 irradiation. Different x-ray energies and filters have been used on a set of characteristic components and compared to the baseline cobalt-60 irradiations, and the results are expected to give way to a set of recommendations related to the advantages and limitations of commercial component TID testing with x-ray sources.
As for simulations, advancement has been made both related to the modelling of facilities and beams, mainly linked to the photon fields for TID testing introduced above, as well as with regards to calculations of the evolution of the atmospheric neutron induced soft error rate with technology scaling.
As to what concerns dosimetry and beam characterization activities, important progress has been achieved in the calibration against total ionizing dose (TID) of several multimode fibers, including a thorough analysis of the sensitivity dependence with parameters such as temperature or dose rate. These promising results will be used to improve the dosimetry capabilities and harmonization across the RADNEXT facility network.
Regarding emerging SEE testing challenges, RADNEXT’s progress has so far mainly focused on the evaluation of the irradiation response of several complex components, including FPGAs, microprocessors and systems-on-chip. Valuable methodological information will be derived from such results, which include also the benchmark of different radiation effects mitigation techniques. This work will be complemented by the foreseen activities related to performing irradiation experiments and qualification on higher levels of integration, such as board or box level.
As to what concerns cumulative effects, the main advancement has been achieved in relation to the use of x-ray TID testing as a more accessible and environmentally friendly solution when compared to the more classical cobalt-60 irradiation. Different x-ray energies and filters have been used on a set of characteristic components and compared to the baseline cobalt-60 irradiations, and the results are expected to give way to a set of recommendations related to the advantages and limitations of commercial component TID testing with x-ray sources.
As for simulations, advancement has been made both related to the modelling of facilities and beams, mainly linked to the photon fields for TID testing introduced above, as well as with regards to calculations of the evolution of the atmospheric neutron induced soft error rate with technology scaling.