Improvement of radiation resistance of magnetic field microsensors

Abstract

Magnetic microsensors with the active area volume of 10 −5 mm 3 are fabricated on the basis of III–V semiconductor microcrystals. To improve the radiation resistance of magnetic microsensors complex metallurgical doping was applied to semiconductor microcrystals during growth. In addition to a basic donor dopant, rare-earth elements and special extras which are able to bind oxygen and act as drains for radiation defects are introduced. All that slows down the process of deep acceptor level complexation by means of radiation defects and background impurities, and improves the radiation resistance of sensors. Studies of effect of fast neutrons irradiation with energies from 0.1÷13 MeV and fluence of 10 14 n cm −2 were carried out. It has been shown that at the mean sensitivity change of 0.12% for the set of InSb-based microsensors with the electron concentration of (1÷3)·10 17 cm −3, for 60% of these microsensors the change does not exceed the determination error ±0.04%. The investigations have shown the relevance of the continuation of works directed to further improvement of the magnetic microsensor radiation resistance.