Radiation hardness of bipolar transistor based integrated circuits improved by ECR hydrogen plasma treatment and Si-wafers gettering

We demonstrate significant improvement of the radiation immunity of the integrated circuits based on silicon bipolar transistors. Strong decrease of the current gain degradation and significant yield improvement after high-energy $\gamma$ irradiation are both shown. This was achieved by development of efficient hydrogenation process for the silicon bulk and the surface dielectric layer using electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma, as well as implementation of effective Si-wafer gettering option.