Long-term Damage Induced by Hadrons in Silicon Detectors for Uses at the LHC-accelerator and in Space Missions

Abstract

In the present paper, the phenomenological model developed by the authors in previous papers has been used to evaluate the degradation induced by hadron irradiation at future accelerator facilities or by cosmic protons in high resistivity silicon detectors. The damage has been analysed at the microscopic (defects production and their evolution toward equilibrium) and at the macroscopic level (changes in the leakage current of the p–n junction). The rates of production of primary defects, as well as their evolution toward equilibrium have been evaluated considering explicitly the type of projectile particle and its energy. Vacancy-interstitial annihilation, interstitial migration to sink, divacancy and complex (VP, VO, V2O, CiOi, CiCs) formation are taken into account for differently doped initial silicon material. The influence of these defects on the leakage current density has been compared with experimental data from the literature, and predictions for the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) radiation fields, as well as for space missions in the near Earth orbits have been done, in the frame of the Schokley–Read–Hall model.