News & Events
Harris Semiconductor Introduces World’s First Radiation Hardened Dual MOSFET Driver

— New HS-4423RH Adds to Harris’ Growing Family of Satellite Power Management Chips

MELBOURNE, FL., April 5, 1999—Harris Semiconductor announced today the availability of the world’s first radiation hardened dual MOSFET driver. When combined with Harris’ existing radiation hardened MOSFETs, the new HS-4423RH provides a rad hard power management solution for defense satellites, commercial satellites and other platforms requiring high reliability performance in harsh radiation environments.

"This new dual MOSFET driver is the perfect complement to our existing rad hard MOSFETs," says Tom Marshall, Harris’ Manager of Space & Defense Marketing, "For satellite manufacturers who realize that failure is not an option, the Harris rad hard power solution is the insurance they need. With 300kRADs of hardness, latch-up and low dose rate immunity, this is the ideal MOSFET driver when reliability is tantamount."

The radiation hardened HS-4423RH is an inverting, dual, monolithic high-speed MOSFET driver designed to convert transistor to transistor logic (TTL) level signals into high current output voltages up to 18V. The HS-4423RH provides fast rise and fall times (25ns, typical), high output current and low power consumption (40mW, typical) for extremely quick control of MOSFETs in high frequency applications. The high current outputs minimize power losses in power MOSFETs by rapidly charging and discharging the gate capacitance. A low voltage lock-out circuit places the outputs into a tri-state mode when the supply voltage drops below 10V.

The TTL level inputs of the HS-4423RH can be directly driven by Harris’ HS-1825ARH PWM device or ACS/ACTS and HCS/HCTS-type logic devices. It can be used to drive Harris’ rad hard MOSFETs such as the FS055. Additional rad hard devices will be added to Harris’ growing family of Space & Defense products in the coming months to provide a complete rad hard power management solution for satellites.

Harris’HS-4423RH is ideally suited for switching power supplies, DC to DC converter and motor/motion control applications, on board communications and surveillance satellites. It is constructed using Harris’ dielectrically isolated Rad Hard Silicon Gate (RSG) process that is immune to Single Event Latch-Up and is guaranteed to 300kRADs (Si) of total dose radiation. Detailed electrical specifications for the HS-4423RH are contained in Standard Military Drawing (SMD) 5962F99511, available from the company’s homepage at http://www.semi.harris.com/data/sm/index.htm.

Price and Availability
The device is immediately available in QML Class V, Q, and T screening levels. The Class V HS-4423RH , in a 16-lead flatpack, is priced at $251.21 each in quantities of 100, and samples are also available.

About Harris’ RSG Process
Harris’ new RSG process is tailor-made for high voltage, high reliability radiation hardened applications. It is a BiCMOS process which provides MOS logic and analog switch capabilities as well as bipolar logic and input devices. RSG supports 40V operation and offers 300kRADs (Si) radiation hardness for Class V and QML space applications. Metallization is 1.6(u)m thick for high current applications such as space power. The dielectrically isolated substrate ensures complete latchup immunity, and channel stops eliminate leakage paths around the MOS gates.

About Harris Space & Defense Business
Harris Semiconductor formed its existing Space & Defense Business in November of 1998 to address high-growth opportunities in commercial space, military space, and defense. Harris’ Space & Defense Business combines several analog, mixed signal and power management technologies with unique radiation hardened capability to provide turn-key solutions for the military & commercial space and defense markets. Space & Defense product families include rad hard logic, memory, microprocessors, MOSFETs, power ICs, analog switches, data converters, operational amplifiers, multiplexers and buffers. Also offered are analog and mixed signal customer military ICs built using a variety of radiation hardened and high reliability processes.

Harris Corporation's Semiconductor sector manufactures discrete semiconductors and integrated circuits. Product development efforts are focused on innovative "next level solutions" for the communications and power markets. The company’s portfolio of high-value products serve many market segments – automotive, industrial, PC computing, wireless networking, signal processing, telecommunications, PC multimedia, consumer electronics, defense and space.

Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS), with worldwide sales of $3.9 billion, is an international communications and electronics company focused on providing product, system and service solutions that take its customers to the next level. The company provides a wide range of products and services such as wireless and personal communications, digital television (HDTV), health care information, automotive electronics, transportation, business information, defense communications and information and Lanier office products.