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Radiation susceptibility of electronics has always been about probing electrical properties in either transient or time-accumulated phenomena. As the size and complexity of electronic chips or systems increase, detection of the most vulnerable regions becomes more time consuming and challenging. In this study, we hypothesize that localized mechanical stress, if overlapping electrically sensitive regions, can make electronic devices more susceptible to radiation. Accordingly, we develop an indirect technique to map mechanical and electrical hotspots to identify radiation-susceptible regions of the operational amplifier AD844 to ionizing radiation. Mechanical susceptibility is measured using pulsed thermal phase analysis via lock-in thermography and electrical biasing is used to identify electrically relevant regions. A composite score of electrical and mechanical sensitivity was constructed to serve as a metric for ionizing radiation susceptibility. Experimental results, compared against the literature, indicate effectiveness of the new technique in the rapid detection of radiation-vulnerable regions. The findings could be attractive for larger systems, for which traditional analysis would take —two to three orders of magnitude more time to complete. However, the indirect nature of the technique makes the study more approximate and in need for more consistency and validation efforts. 

Abstract Discovering multifunctional materials with tunable plasmonic properties, capable of surviving harsh environments is critical for advanced optical and telecommunication applications. We chose high-entropy transition-metal carbides because of their exceptional thermal, chemical stability, and mechanical properties. By integrating computational thermodynamic disorder modeling and time-dependent density functional theory characterization, we discovered a crossover energy in the infrared and visible range, corresponding to a metal-to-dielectric transition, exploitable for plasmonics. It was also found that the optical response of high-entropy carbides can be largely tuned from the near-IR to visible when changing the transition metal components and their concentration. By monitoring the electronic structures, we suggest rules for optimizing optical properties and designing tailored high-entropy ceramics. Experiments performed on the archetype carbide HfTa 4 C 5 yielded plasmonic properties from room temperature to 1500K. Here we propose plasmonic transition-metal high-entropy carbides as a class of multifunctional materials. Their combination of plasmonic activity, high-hardness, and extraordinary thermal stability will result in yet unexplored applications. 

As electronic systems become larger and more complex, detection of the most vulnerable regions (MVR) to radiation exposure becomes more difficult and time consuming. We present a heuristic approach where the mechanical and thermal aspects of devices are exploited to quickly identify MVRs. Our approach involves the topological mapping of two device conditions. The first condition identifies regions with the highest mechanical strain or density of defects and interfaces via thermal wave probing and phase analysis. The second condition identifies regions with high electrical field. It is hypothesized that the region with the highest thermal wave penetration resistance and electrical field will exhibit the highest sensitivity to incoming radiation for single events and potentially, total ionizing dose. Our approach implements a simplistic design that improves analysis time by ∼2–3 orders of magnitude over current radiation sensitivity mapping methods. The design is demonstrated on the well-studied operational amplifier LM124, which shows agreement with the literature in identifying sensitive transistors–QR1, Q9, and Q18–with relatively high phase percentile values (>70%) and ΔT percentiles (>50%), satisfying conditions for elevated radiation susceptibility. This is followed by experimental results on a static random access memory (HM-6504) and a Xilinx Artix-7 35 T system on a chip.