Today, many electronic circuits are required to be able to work effectively, even in environments exposed to ionizing radiation. This work examines the effects of ionizing radiation on shift registers realized in a bulk 16 nm FinFET technology, focusing on Single-Event Upset (SEU). An SEU occurs when a charged particle ionizes a sensitive node in the circuit, causing a stored bit to flip from one logical state to its opposite. This study estimates the saturation cross-section for the 16 nm FinFET technology and compares it with results from a 28 nm planar CMOS technology. The experiments were conducted at the SIRAD facility of INFN Legnaro Laboratories (Italy). The device under test was irradiated with the ion sources ⁵⁸$Ni$ and ²⁸$Si$, both with different tilt angles, to assess the number of SEUs with different LET and range values. Additionally, the study evaluates the effectiveness of the radiation-hardened by design technique, specifically the Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR), which is a technique commonly employed in planar technologies. However, in this particular case study, TMR proved to be ineffective, and the reasons behind this limitation are analyzed along with potential improvements for future designs.

In this paper, a Constant-Output-Current, constant-Toff, buck-mode switching converter is presented. The device uses a Peak Current Mode Control (PCMC) with an integrated High-Side (HS) current sensing and, with typical voltage regulator solutions, delivers a constant output current. The proposed concept is validated by an IC prototype in a 0.35 μm BCD process with an area of 0.56 mm. The output current and the off-time values can be modified with external trimmers. It can regulate an output current from a minimum value of 700 mA to a maximum of 2.5 A. The highest current is reached with a switching frequency of 1.5 MHz. A maximum frequency of 3.3 MHz can be reached with an output current of 730 mA. The duty cycle can vary from 20% to 96%. A peak efficiency of 96.4% at 700 mA is obtained.