Sustainable electronics for nano-spacecraft in deep space missions

An on-the-fly self-healing device is experimentally demonstrated for sustainability of space electronics. A high temperature, which is generated by Joule heating in a gate electrode, provides an on-chip annealing of damages induced by ionizing radiation, hot carrier, and tunneling stress. With the self-healing process, a highly scaled silicon nanowire gate-all-around field-effect transistor shows improved long-term reliability in a logic transistor, floating body DRAM, and charge-trap Flash memory, respectively. A thermally isolated gate structure is proposed to enhance the self-healing effect.