Degradation of electrical properties of silicon detectors under 3 MeV proton irradiation

It is well known that under radiation exposure, silicon junction detectors change in their electrical properties. The irradiation-induced defects can modify the initial doping concentrations, creating generation–recombination centres and introducing trapping for the charge carriers. The trapping centres are responsible in a decrease of the charge collection efficiency and a longer charge collection time, affecting the quality of the spectrum. In order to use the detectors in correct way, one needs to know the qualitative behaviour of the detector properties as a function of the radiation dose. In this work, we study the radiation effects on our surface barrier detectors, Al/Si(n), irradiated by 3 MeV protons, as a function of fluence (1012–1015 pcm−2).