Degradation of instrumentation amplifiers due to the nonionizing energy loss damage

Abstract

Tests on instrumentation amplifiers exposed to neutron radiation have been done. The tested devices were commercial instrumentation amplifiers or designed with rad-tol commercial operational amplifiers. The results show changes in frequency behavior, gain, offset voltage, output saturation voltages, and quiescent current. The radiation tolerance is bigger in amplifiers with JFET input stage or with large frequency bandwidth and is smaller if the amplifier has been designed for reducing the power consumption. The IAs built with OPAMPs have a higher tolerance than the commercial ones, but they have disadvantages: high temperature influence, low CMRR, etc.