Calculation and measurement of leakage current variations due to displacement damage for a silicon diode exposed to space protons

The presence of ionizing radiation in the space environment, due to trapped particles, solar particles and cosmic rays can be a serious threat to the proper functioning of electronic components used in satellites and spacecraft. In this work, the leakage current variation of a silicon diode, as the basic element of many electronic components, has been investigated in the exposure of space protons. For this purpose, the GEANT4 Monte Carlo code has been used to calculate the non-ionizing energy loss in the device. The simulation of electrical parameters for irradiation of space protons were also done by SILVACO software. The results show that the leakage current increases by about 1.85 times the amount of it before irradiation, up to about 96.2 nA/μm by the increase in the proton flux up to 2.1×1012 p/cm2. Irradiation of BPW34 photodiodes under 30 MeV protons was performed to validate the results of simulation.