Radiation Hardened Low-Dropout (LDO) Adjustable Negative Voltage Regulator Evaluation Board

16 of Intersil radiation-hardened ICs were onboard the December 5, 2014 maiden voyage of NASA's Orion spacecraft, also known as the uncrewed Exploration Flight Test 1. These rad-hard ICs are deployed in Orion's crew module, where they are used to support subsystems for mission critical applications in power distribution, navigation and flight control, and in the inertial measurement unit.

Over the past 19 years, the space industry has placed a higher value on understanding the effects that long-term, low dose radiation can have on ICs. Intersil's radiation testing specialist Nick van Vonno discusses why this shift has occurred and what we are doing to address this change.

With the launch of the ELDRS (Extended Low Dose Radiation Sensitivity) facility, we have solidified our leadership position in the Space IC market. Our acceptance testing strategy hasn't changed, we've just improved it by extending the scope of the type of radiation testing we provide. Nick van Vonno discusses our commitment to wafer-level radiation acceptance testing.