A SEGR Hardened by Design Charge Pump for MTP Memories

Charge pump circuits are often used to provide the high voltage required for programming and erasing the storage cells in multi-time programmable (MTP) memory. In the space environment, influenced by high-energy particles, charge pump circuits are highly susceptible to radiation effects, leading to permanent failures. This paper uses radiation hardened by circuit design methods, against single event gate rupture (SEGR) in charge pump circuits, and proposes a four-phase clock charge pump circuit hardened to single event gate rupture effects. This hardened circuit includes the circuit structure, boost capacitors, bootstrap capacitors, and the four-phase clock charge pump circuit system. The proposed circuit is designed and fabricated in a 55-nm process. In the heavy-ion testing environment, when the linear energy transfer (LET) is 76.3 MeV·cm²/mg, the MTP memory can still perform programming and erasing operations normally, and no single event gate rupture effects have been detected.