Radiation Hardness Study of Silicon Carbide Sensors under High-Temperature Proton Beam Irradiations

Micromachines (Basel). 2023 Jan 9;14(1):166. doi: 10.3390/mi14010166.

Abstract

Silicon carbide (SiC), thanks to its material properties similar to diamond and its industrial maturity close to silicon, represents an ideal candidate for several harsh-environment sensing applications, where sensors must withstand high particle irradiation and/or high operational temperatures. In this study, to explore the radiation tolerance of SiC sensors to multiple damaging processes, both at room and high temperature, we used the Ion Microprobe Chamber installed at the Ruđer Bošković Institute (Zagreb, Croatia), which made it possible to expose small areas within the same device to different ion beams, thus evaluating and comparing effects within a single device. The sensors tested, developed jointly by STLab and SenSiC, are PIN diodes with ultrathin free-standing membranes, realized by means of a recently developed doping-selective electrochemical etching. In this work, we report on the changes of the charge transport properties, specifically in terms of the charge collection efficiency (CCE), with respect to multiple localized proton irradiations, performed at both room temperature (RT) and 500 °C.

Keywords: high-temperature irradiation; proton irradiation; radiation hardness; silicon carbide.

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the RADIATE project (European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824096) and partially supported by the SAMOTHRACE project (Avviso 3277-“SAMOTHRACE” ECS00000022–CUP B63D21015260004; Missione 4 Istruzione e Ricerca-Componente 2-Investimento 1.5 “PNRR”, NGEU) and by the FRIDA INFN project.