Radiation hardness of silicon detectors based on pre-irradiated silicon

Radiation hardness of planar detectors processed from pre-irradiated and thermo-annealed n-type FZ silicon substrates, and standard FZ as a reference, was studied. The high purity n-Si wafers with carrier concentration 4.8×10 11 cm −3 were pre-irradiated in Kiev's nuclear research reactor by fast neutrons to fluence of about 10 16 neutrons/cm 2 and thermo-annealed at a temperature of about 850 °C. Silicon diodes were fabricated from standard and pre-irradiated silicon substrates by IRST (Italy). All diodes were subsequently irradiated by fast neutrons at Kiev and Ljubljana nuclear reactors. The dependence of the effective doping concentration as a function of fluence ( N eff =f ( Φ )) was measured for reference and pre-irradiated diodes. Pre-irradiation of silicon improves the radiation hardness by decreasing the acceptor introduction rate ( β ), thus mitigating the depletion voltage ( V dep ) increase. In particular, β in reference samples is about 0.017 cm −1 , and for pre-irradiated samples is about 0.008 cm −1 . Therefore, the method of preliminary irradiation can be useful to increase the radiation hardness of silicon devices to be used as sensors or detectors in harsh radiation environments.