An Experimental Setup Based on a Printable System for the Acquisition of the Real-Time Electrical Response of Irradiated Semiconductor Devices

Nowadays, the semiconductor market is growing
exponentially in many sectors and more particularly in the
applications of the Internet of Things in “harsh” environments.
These so-called harsh environments result in difficult operating
conditions for electronics. To guarantee the reliability of operations
in such environments, the devices must be tested in the
specified extreme conditions. In the case of exposure to ionizing
radiation, tests are generally carried out on specific facilities such
as a cyclotron. Unfortunately, access to this kind of facilities
is difficult, expensive and time-consuming. Consequently, in
industrial environment, semiconductors are usually characterized
ante- and post-irradiation up to a specific dose, what provides
information about drifts in DC parameters but does not help to
check any transient effect. This paper proposes a portable 3D
printed test set-up allowing to realize this transient measurement
while ensuring no interaction with the outside world. Moreover
the setup proposes a variation of distance to favor or not the
interaction of the semiconductor with the ionizing radiation
source. The main advantages of the proposed 3D setup is its
adaptability to any kind of radiation source geometry as well
as its low encumbrance. These enable the possibility to use
any local radiation source, other than accelerators, available in
smaller facilities. Finally, a complete methodology is proposed
to characterize the transient phenomena during the interaction
of ionizing radiation with the semiconductor target, in order to
validate the setup.