Lately I’ve received many inquiries about the paper on radiation-hardness testing of implantable integrated circuits that I published with Dr. Larry Stotts (now Executive VP R&D at Biotronik), and the late Dr. John Prince. This is because the effects of medical diagnostic and therapeutic radiation are becoming an issue of concern to physicians who often encounter the need for radiotherapy in the growing population of patients implanted with pacemakers, defibrillators, neural stimulators, and drug-delivery pumps.
Although the paper reported mainly on the test of floating-gate EEPROMs, the modern interest is on the test methods that we developed to test ICs used in implantable devices for hardness to the type of radiation encountered in the medical field.
Click here for our paper: D. Prutchi, J.L. Prince and L.J. Stotts, “X- and Gamma-Ray Hardness of Floating-Gate EEPROM Technology as Applied to Implantable Medical Devices”, IEEE Transactions on Electronic Components and Packaging Technology, 22(3), 390-398, 1999.
Sicel Technologies, Inc. was founded in 1999 and was based in Morrisville, NC. It ceased operations in 2010 after it declared bankruptcy.