Anne Hémeryck et Antoine Jay from the M3 team, along with Richard Monflier from the I2C department at LAAS-CNRS, have just received the prestigious Outstanding Conference Paper Award at the IEEE Nuclear and Space Radiation Effects Conference (NSREC) 2025, held in Nashville. This award, a global benchmark in the field of radiation effects on electronic components, recognises work published in IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science as part of a collaboration between LAAS-CNRS, ISAE-SUPAERO, CNES, CEA, and Sodern.

The paper, entitled "Gamma-Ray Induced Displacement Damage in Silicon Microvolumes: Single Defect Generation Rate and Random Telegraph Signal", addresses a fundamental question that had long remained unanswered: how can individual radiation-induced defects in silicon be observed and characterised? By exploiting the extreme sensitivity of modern CMOS image sensors, the team succeeded in directly detecting gamma-ray-induced point defects one by one, and in measuring their generation rate within silicon microvolumes. Even more surprisingly, the work demonstrates that simple point defects can give rise to complex Random Telegraph Signal (RTS) behaviour — a phenomenon previously attributed to more elaborate mechanisms.

Within this collaboration, LAAS-CNRS contributed on two complementary fronts. Antoine Jay and Anne Hémeryck brought their expertise in atomistic modelling, simulating the behaviour of point defects in silicon at the atomic scale in order to link experimental observations to the underlying physical mechanisms. In parallel, Richard Monflier drew on his expertise in the electrical characterisation of defects, particularly through DLTS technique (Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy). This dual approach — simulating and measuring defects — proved decisive in explaining why an apparently simple defect can produce an electrical signature as complex as an RTS signal.

These results open up new avenues for understanding the degradation of space sensors exposed to cosmic radiation, with direct implications for the reliability of instruments on board satellites. By establishing for the first time a quantitative link between irradiation and the generation of individual defects, this research lays solid foundations for the predictive modelling of dose effects in advanced CMOS technologies.

Read more:

Gamma-Ray Induced Displacement Damage in Silicon Microvolumes: Single Defect Generation Rate and Random Telegraph Signal - Vincent Goiffon, Clémentine Durnez, Antoine Jay, Ali Jouni, Vera Kharchenkova, Aubin Antonsanti, Valérian Lalucaa, Damien Lambert, Thomas Jarrin, Richard Monflier, Nicolas Richard, Philippe Paillet, Anne Hémeryck, Daniel McGrath and Cédric Virmontois, IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science 76 (2026), 1078 - 1088 - doi : 10.1109/TNS.2025.3648295 - DOI : 10.1109/TNS.2025.3648295