HTLT oxygenated silicon detectors: radiation hardness and long-term stability

Silicon detectors fabricated by BNLs high-temperature, long time (HTLT) oxidation technology have been characterized using various techniques for material/detector properties and radiation hardness with respect to gamma, proton and neutron irradiation. It has been found that a uniform oxygen distribution with a concentration of 4 x 10(17)/cm(3) has been achieved in high-resistivity FZ silicon with our HTLT technology. With the standard HTLT technology, the original high resistivity of FZ silicon will be retained. However, the controlled introduction of thermal donors (TD) with ii concentration higher than the original shallow doping impurity can be achieved with a process slightly altered from the standard HTLT technology (HTLT-TD). Detectors made by both technologies (HTLT and HTLT-TD) have been found to be advantageous in radiation hardness to gamma and proton irradiation, ill terms of detector full depletion voltage degradation, as compared to the control samples. In fact, these detectors are insensitive to gamma irradiation up to 600 Mrad and more tolerant by at least a factor of two to proton irradiation and the following reverse annealing. However, there is little improvement in radiation hardness to neutron irradiation, which has been attributed to the nature of neutron-induced damage that is dominated by extended defects or defect clusters. Microscopic measurements (I-DLTS) have also been made on control and HTLT samples and will be compared and presented. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.