Trends in flight altitudes, avionics designs and electronic component technology are engendering markedly enhanced susceptibility to atmospheric neutron radiation in modern aircraft. It is possible for individual neutrons from this environment to upset or even destroy microcircuits. The radiation intensity increases sharply with altitude and is typically several hundred times more intense at the top of the range of civil aircraft cruising altitude than at ground level. As aircraft fly higher and their avionics makes more intensive use of potentially sensitive devices, the risk of these "Single Event Effects" (SEE's) is multiplied. Furthermore, the trend among microcircuit manufacturers is to build devices which operate at ever lower voltages with ever smaller memory cells and feature sizes. Both of these trends tend to exacerbate the intrinsic susceptibility of the devices. In consequence, avionics developers will imminently be confronted by a technological barrier from the reliability and safety implications of atmospheric SEE's, which they need urgently to address. The Radiation Effects Group of Matra BAe Dynamics has been developing a picosecond pulsed laser system for simulating SEE's in microcircuits since 1998. This paper will describe this facility and will explain its application to the hardening of avionics against SEE's by filtering out the more susceptible component types from future avionics system designs.
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