Evaluation of commercial ADC radiation tolerance for accelerator experiments

Abstract: Electronic components used in high energy physics experiments are subjected to a radiation background composed of high energy hadrons, mesons and photons. These particles can induce permanent and transient effects that affect the normal device operation. Ionizing dose and displacement damage can cause chronic damage which disable the device permanently. Transient effects or single event effects are in general recoverable with time intervals that depend on the nature of the failure. The magnitude of these effects is technology dependent with feature size being one of the key parameters. Analog to digital converters are components that are frequently used in detector front end electronics, generally placed as close as possible to the sensing elements to maximize signal fidelity. We report on radiation effects tests conducted on 17 commercially available analog to digital converters and extensive single event effect measurements on specific twelve and fourteen bit ADCs that presented high tolerance to ionizing dose. Mitigation strategies for single event effects (SEE) are discussed for their use in the large hadron collider environment.