Recoil-nucleus spectra in the interaction of cosmic-ray protons with spacecraft electronics
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CLEI Theory
Recoil-Nucleus Spectra in the Interaction of Cosmic-Ray Protons with Spacecraft Electronics T. V. Chuvilskaya, A. A. Shirokova, A. G. Kadmenskii, and N. G. Chechenin* Institute of Nuclear Physics, Moscow State University, Leninskie gory, Moscow, 119992 Russia Received October 5, 2007
Abstract—The cross sections for nuclear reactions induced by 50- to 1000-MeV protons in silicon and the angular distributions of products of these reactions are calculated, along with the recoil-nucleus spectra. The recoil-nucleus spectra are shown to contain a monotonically decreasing portion and a recoil peak, which is manifested most clearly at incident-proton energies in excess of 100 MeV. The possibility of employing these results to derive more reliable estimates of single-event upsets in onboard spacecraft electronics is discussed. PACS numbers: 85.40.-e DOI: 10.1134/S1063778808070247
1. INTRODUCTION It was established that the present-day electronic equipment of spacecrafts experiences the effect of cosmic-ray particles, which causes failures of this equipment because of distortions of information and executable codes allocated in memory cells. Singleevent upsets caused by a single particle are recoverable; in this case, the operation of the electronics remains by and large undistorted. Nonrecoverable radiation failures are much rarer—phenomena that may lead to such failures include the burning-out of powerful field transistors, prelatchup dielectric rupture, and the thyristor effect (latching) in integrated circuits [1, 2]. Among probable sources of single-event upsets, cosmic-ray protons are thought to be the most hazardous in planning spacecraft flights [3, 4]. The energy spectrum of protons of solar cosmic rays undergoes strong changes from one outburst of solar activity to another. The spectrum in question extends up to several MeV units for the most frequent outbursts (an outburst per week) and up to 1 GeV or more for the rarest outbursts (an outburst per year) [5, 6]. The production and subsequent separation of electron–hole pairs in the sensitive microdevice volume is a dominant mechanism of single-event upsets; such pairs arise in the course of ionization energy losses of either primary particles or secondary particles, which originate from the elastic scattering of primary particles or from nuclear reactions. The probability of single-event upsets caused by *
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a specific particle in a particular microelectronic circuit is characterized by the effective cross section, which depends on the number of charged carriers generated by the particle. In turn, the number of charged carriers is a function of the rate of particle energy losses (that is, the linear energy transfer), the rate of carrier recombination, and the size and configuration of the sensitive volume. A light primary particle, such as a proton, can have insignificant ionization energy losses, but nuclear reactions initiated by it, albeit having a low probability, produce recoil nuclei and heavy nuclear fragments possessing hi
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