Radiation Shielding for Electronic Cards Produced for Use on Cube Satellites

Date

2025-01-01

Author

UZUN DURAN, SELCEN
YAZGAN, AYHAN
ALVER, ÜMİT
Demirköz, Melahat Bilge
ASLAN, MUSTAFA

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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In this study, on-board computer (OBC) electronic cards designed for cube satellites (CubeSats) containing a 168-MHz STM32F407 processor were shielded against space radiation and were tested. For shielding, a 6-mm-thick “neat” aluminum plate was used to cover the entire surface of the OBC card. The 6-mm-thick aluminum plate with a hole that matched the size of the STM32F407 processor was filled with either a neat epoxy, a 30 wt% amorphous boron added epoxy, a 30 wt% tantalum added epoxy, or a 20 wt% B4C-30 wt% tantalum added epoxy composite used as shielding materials. Structural and morphological properties of the shielding materials were examined by X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy. The OBC cards covered with different shielding materials were irradiated with 30-MeV protons, while the performance of the cards was observed live. Specifically, the outputs of digital input/output (I/O), universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter, direct memory access, and digital-to-analog converter units were monitored during radiation testing, and the first deteriorations were observed in the digital I/O part. As a result of this study, taking into account just the total ionizing dose, shielded electronic boards showed 2 to 10 times higher radiation resistance than unshielded.

Subject Keywords

B4C, Boron, CubeSat, epoxy, proton radiation, tantalum

URI

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?partnerID=HzOxMe3b&scp=105013794898&origin=inward
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/115783

Collections

Department of Physics, Article