  Electronic components used in high energy physics experiments are subjected
to a radiation background composed of high energy hadrons, mesons and photons.
These particles can induce permanent and transient effects that affect the
normal device operation. Ionizing dose and displacement damage can cause
chronic damage which disable the device permanently. Transient effects or
single event effects are in general recoverable with time intervals that depend
on the nature of the failure. The magnitude of these effects is technology
dependent with feature size being one of the key parameters. Analog to digital
converters are components that are frequently used in detector front end
electronics, generally placed as close as possible to the sensing elements to
maximize signal fidelity. We report on radiation effects tests conducted on 17
commercially available analog to digital converters and extensive single event
effect measurements on specific twelve and fourteen bit ADCs that presented
high tolerance to ionizing dose. Mitigation strategies for single event effects
(SEE) are discussed for their use in the large hadron collider environment.
