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edfas.org 47 ELECTRONIC DEVICE FAILURE ANALYSIS | VOLUME 23 NO. 1 The Qnami ProteusQ platform is the first scanning probemicroscopemaking use of NV technology (nitrogen- vacancy color center in diamond), providing an unprec- edented combination of spatial resolution and magnetic sensitivity under ambient conditions. TheProteusQallows engineers and scientists to performquantitative and non- perturbative analysis of surface magnetic fields at the nanoscale. This analysis of a variety of magnetic samples including antiferromagnets, multiferroics, and nanomag- nets, supports the development of advanced materials, including spintronics devices. The key functionalities of the ProteusQ platform include: quantitative scanning NV magnetometer with a single-spin probe, non-perturbative DC magnetic field sensing, AFMandNVmeasurementmodes under ambient conditions, an automated sample approach and NV readout, an ultra-low thermal drift AFM platform with robust confocal microscope, and programmable control and measurement software. The combination of the ProteusQ with Qnami’s Quantilever MX probes helps provide a direct quantitative measurement of the magnetic field withminimal calibra- tion requirements. For more information, visit horiba.com. the semiconducting channel, gate oxide, and the insulat- ing materials surrounding it (e.g., isolation or substrate oxides). For years, research teams worldwide have been trying todevise strategies that couldmake transistorsmore resis- tant to radiation. This has proved to be highly challenging, and only a few of the strategies proposed in the past have produced beneficial results. Researchers at PekingUniversity, theChineseAcademy of Sciences and Shanghai Tech University have recently fabricated a radiation-hardened and repairable integrated circuit (IC) based on carbon nanotube transistors with ion gel gates. This IC, first presented in a paper published in Nature Electronics , could be used to build new electronic devices that are more resistant to high energy radiation. Zhiyong Zhang, one of the researchers who carried out the study said, “Our work aimed to realize a kind of radiation-immune IC. In addition to general purpose chips, the requirements on radiation-hardened electrical devices and integrated circuits are growing fast due to the rapid developments in the space exploration and nuclear energy industries.” Most previous strategies to make electronics more resistant to radiation focus upon hardening only single elements of an electronic device. As a result, using these measures to create transistors and ICs that are resistant to high energy radiation can be difficult. In their paper, Zhang and his colleagues introduced a new strategy that enables the realization of transis- tors and ICs that are wholly immune to radiation related damage. The approach they devised essentially entails the redesign of all the vulnerable parts of FETs and the use of new materials that are more resistant to radiation. In addition, the researchers introduced amethod to recover radiation damaged FETs via a heat treatment process known as annealing, which they carried out at amoderate temperature of 100°C for 10min. “The fabricated ICs based on this type of FET present high radiation tolerance of up to 15 Mrad, which is much higher than that of Si transistors (1 Mrad),” Zhang said. “The combination of high radiation tolerance and thermal recoverability paves theway for the development of a new technology of radiation damage immune ICs.” The radiation-hardened IC has a semiconducting carbon nanotube transistor (CNT) as a channel, an ion gel as its gate, and a substrate made of polyimide. CNTs are intrinsically radiation-resistant semiconductors due to their strong C-C bonds, nanoscale cross sections and their low atomic number. Therefore, in their study, the The ProteusQ scanning NV magnetometer. RADIATION-IMMUNE AND REPAIRABLE CHIPS TO FABRICATE DURABLE ELECTRONICS To operate safely and reliably in terrestrial and space environments, electronic devices should be resistant to a wide variety of environmental factors, including the presence of radiation. In fact, high energy radiation can damage several elements of field effect transistors (FETs) commonly used in integrated circuits, including