Design of Radiation-Tolerant High-Speed Signal Processing Circuit for Detecting Prompt Gamma Rays by Nuclear Explosion

Electronic equipment in nuclear power plants and nuclear warfare is damaged by transient effects that cause high-energy pulsed radiation. There is a concern that this type of damage can even cause enormous economic losses and human casualties by paralyzing control systems. To solve this problem, this study proposes a complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) logic-based, switching detection circuit that can detect pulsed radiations at a fast rate. This circuit improved response speed and power consumption by using the switching operation of digital logic compared with conventional circuits. Furthermore, radiation tolerance to total ionizing dose (TID) effects was achieved even in a cumulative radiation environment because of the use of the design using p-metal-oxide semiconductor field effect transistor (p-MOSFET). The proposed detection circuit was manufactured by a 0.18 µm CMOS bulk process for integration. Normal operation in the detection range of 2.0 × 107 rad(si)/s was verified by pulsed radiation test evaluations, and the tolerance properties to a radiation of 2 Mrad was verified based on cumulative radiation test evaluations.