Experimental Assessment and Analysis of the Influence of Radiation on Through-silicon Vias

Electronic products used in aerospace environment face severe load condition including mechanical shock, thermal shock and different kinds of radiation. It has been studied for a long time that how radiation influences metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS) devices but few literatures have been published about that how radiation affects through-silicon via (TSV)-based systems. And therefore we studied the reliability of TSV under the experimental radiation condition of Co-60 gamma radiation with a total radiation dose of 500 Gy. Three kinds of samples with different dimensions of TSVs and different processes of oxidation layer were designed and fabricated to measure the leakage current between two adjacent TSVs before and after irradiation. Another kind of sample with an array of TSVs was designed and fabricated to measure the capacitance of TSV parasitic MOS capacitance before and after irradiation. The I-V characteristics showed that the leakage current increased significantly after irradiation and breakdown of silicon oxide of a part of samples layer occurred at a lower voltage after irradiation. The value of the TSV parasitic MOS capacitance decreased obviously and the slope of the C-V characteristic were also changed after irradiation. As a result, it is important and necessary to study the effect of radiation on TSV reliability.