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To: tcmay who wrote (163446)	4/4/2002 1:53:16 PM
From: John Walliker	Respond to of 186894

Tim, The electrons are allowed to leak away when intense UV light irradiates the array. (A few months or so of rooftop sunlight will not erase the cells, as we determined many times in experiments, and neither will airport x-rays, a common misconception. Basically, several kilorads or more are needed.) Many years ago I invented a low-energy x-ray eraser for eproms and single-chip microprocessors. The idea was that one-time programmable devices (eproms in plastic packages without the quartz window) with program bugs could be recycled instead of being scrapped. When I came to test the idea I found that the x-ray dose needed to erase all the bits was so high that it caused permanent damage to the devices such that they were unable to retain information for more than a few minutes. Also many years ago, British Telecom banned flash photography in digital telephone exchanges because the photocurrent induced in eproms could cause soft errors or even device latchup. John