"Moore’s Law and Radiation Effects on Microelectronics" by Daniel Fleetwood

Seminar by Daniel Fleetwood, Professor à Vanderbilt University and IEEE distinguished-lecturer

50 years ago Gordon Moore postulated that the number of components in an integrated circuit would double every 1-2 years. This trend still holds, making it one of the longest, sustained geometric progressions in the history of the industrialized world, enabling revolutions in computing and in virtually every aspect of technology that is enabled or enhanced by computing. Transistor dimensions have decreased from tens of microns ~ 10 nanometers over this time period. In this presentation, we will examine the effects of Moore’s Law size and voltage scaling of transistors and integrated circuits on the vulnerability of microelectronics to ionizing radiation effects in near-Earth space and terrestrial applications. We will also discuss limitations that these vulnerabilities place on future highly-scaled integrated circuit technologies.