Experimental study of neutron-induced soft errors in modern cardiac pacemakers

摘要

Purpose Density of circuits and size reduction of microelectronic devices increase the sensitivity to natural terrestrial radiation environment. Atmospheric particles, mainly neutrons can cause non-destructive or destructive failures in most electronic circuits, including volatile static memories. The failure occurrence probability of a soft error in real life is very low. However, in the last few years, a safety alert had to be communicated to the physicians for a few defibrillator models potentially affected by background levels of atmospheric ionizing cosmic radiation. The aim of this study was to test in vitro a variety of currently available pacemakers exposed to experimental neutron irradiation.