Single-event upset effects in optocouplers

Single-event upset is investigated for optocouplers using heavy ions. The threshold LET for optocouplers with internal high-gain amplifiers is very low, causing output transients to occur even when the optocouplers are irradiated with short-range alpha particles. Although previous work with high-ene...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inIEEE transactions on nuclear science Vol. 45; no. 6; pp. 2867 - 2875
Main Authors Johnston, A.H., Swift, G.M., Miyahira, T., Guertin, S., Edmonds, L.D.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published IEEE 01.12.1998
Subjects
Circuit testing
Laboratories
Light emitting diodes
Optical amplifiers
Optical coupling
Propulsion
Protons
Pulse amplifiers
Silicon
Space vector pulse width modulation
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Summary:Single-event upset is investigated for optocouplers using heavy ions. The threshold LET for optocouplers with internal high-gain amplifiers is very low, causing output transients to occur even when the optocouplers are irradiated with short-range alpha particles. Although previous work with high-energy protons showed that transients were caused by charge collected in the large-area photodetector, transients generated in the high-gain amplifier make a significant contribution to the total cross section when optocouplers are irradiated with heavy ions. The transient pulse width increases with LET, exceeding 400 ns for long-range particles above 7 MeV-cm/sup 2//mg. This is about an order of magnitude greater than the pulse width that occurs when they are irradiated with protons. The ion range must exceed 50 /spl mu/m to characterize the cross section and pulse width in these devices.
Bibliography:ObjectType-Article-2
SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1
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content type line 23
ISSN:0018-9499
1558-1578
DOI:10.1109/23.736541