Automatic ASET sensitivity evaluation of a custom-designed 180nm CMOS technology operational amplifier

This work presents a SPICE-based automatic SET sensitivity evaluation of a 180nm CMOS full-custom Operational Amplifier. The set-up uses the well known double exponential current law to inject SET into every sensitive node in the circuit hierarchy. The pulse parameters are obtained according to a previously generated population of particles with randomly assigned energies and species, the node bias condition at the instant of the strike and an empirical model obtained through TCAD simulations. The circuit is evaluated transistor-wise for each ion of the generated database and the output waveforms are processed in time and frequency domain to obtain figures of merit of the hardness of the proposed design on a given radioactive environment. Results allow to identify the most sensitive devices and the expected error rate for the projected application, allowing to conduct hardening techniques during early design stages.