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by evancox100 2480 days ago
One of the benefits of FRAM is that you can put it through extreme radiation and still have it work afterwards. So you can put it in a medical instrument that undergoes gamma ray sterilization, and it will still not only work but also retain the data.
1 comments

> One of the benefits of FRAM is that you can put it through extreme radiation and still have it work afterwards.

There are no oxides in the supporting circuitry? [Do you have a link to rad-hard results?]

I only have access to the same public info you would. Here's a technical paper from TI:

http://www.ti.com/lit/wp/sboa154/sboa154.pdf

BTW according to TI's support forum, the MSP430F chips with FRAM are not rated to withstand the high levels of gamma radiation used in medical sterilization.

However, Maxim does have many parts rated for that type of application, with "non-floating gate" NV memories. (Draw your own conclusions about what they are referring to.) https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/app-notes/index.mvp/id/60...

Edit: And of course there are oxides, but you can margin around the assymetric Vt-shift that occurs in the transistors.

Edit 2: At least one part explicitly states in the data sheet that it uses FRAM. https://datasheets.maximintegrated.com/en/ds/DS28E84.pdf