Study of deep level characteristics in the neutrons irradiated Si structures by combining pulsed and steady-state spectroscopy techniques

Abstract

The standard methods, such as capacitance deep level transient spectroscopy (C-DLTS) and thermally stimulated current (TSC) techniques are unsuitable for the analysis of heavily irradiated devices. In this work, therefore, several steady-state and pulsed techniques have been combined to comprehensively evaluate parameters of radiation defects and functional characteristics of the irradiated Si pin detectors. In order to understand defects created by radiation and evaluate their evolution with fluence, C-DLTS and TSC techniques have been employed to make a baseline identification of the radiation induced traps after irradiation with a rather small neutron fluence of 1012 cm−2. The steady-state photo-ionization spectroscopy (PIS) technique has been involved to correlate thermal- and photo- activation energies for definite radiation defects. A contactless technique for simultaneous measurements of the carrier lifetime and the parameters of deep levels based on microwave probed pulsed photo-conductivity (MW-PC) spectroscopy has been applied to correlate carrier capture cross-sections and densities of the identified different radiation defects. A technique for spectroscopy of deep levels in junction structures (BELIV) based on measurements of barrier capacitance charging current transient changes due to additional spectrally resolved pulsed illumination has been applied to evaluate the functional characteristics of the irradiated diodes. Pulsed spectroscopic measurements were implemented by combining the analysis of generation current and of barrier capacitance charging transients modified by a single fs pulse of illumination generated by an optical parametric oscillator of varied wavelength in the range from 0.5 to 10 μm. Several deep levels with activation energy in the range of 0.18–0.8 eV have been resolved from spectral analysis in the samples of Si grown by magnetic field applied Czochralski (MCz) technology.