Study of radiation effects of heavy ions in microelectronic devices

We started a research program using heavy ion beams at the GSI Darmstadt accelerator to investigate radiation effects of heavy ions in microelectronic devices. The understanding of these radiation effects is of particular importance to estimate the radiation rise for microelectronic parts exposed to the cosmic radiation during space missions. In order to expose static RAM devices to heavy ion beams a test system was installed. Additionally we use CCD image sensors to measure the amount of charge deposited inside the sensitive volume of single picture elements. Measurements will be performed with ions of different charge and energy up to 1 GeV/N to investigate the LET dependence of the effects and possible influence of the track structure. The experimental setup is described in this paper and first results are presented.