Temperature-stimulated abnormal annealing of neutron-induced damage in high-resistivity silicon detectors

Neutron-irradiated high-resistivity silicon detectors have been subjected to elevated temperature annealing (ETA). It has been found that both detector full depletion voltage and leakage current exhibit abnormal annealing (or “reverse annealing”) behaviour for highly irradiated detectors: increase with ETA. Laser-induced current measurements indicate a net increase of acceptor type space charges associated with the full depletion voltage increase after ETA. Current deep level transient spectroscopy (I-DLTS) and thermally stimulated current (TSC) data show that the dominant effect is the increase of a level at 0.39 eV below the conduction band (Ec − 0.39 eV) or a level above the valence band (Ev + 0.39 eV). Candidates tentatively identified for this level are the singly charged double vacancy (V-V−) level at Ec − 0.39 eV, the carbon interstitial-oxygen interstitial (CiOi) level at Ev+0.36 eV, and/or the tri-vacancy-oxygen center (V3O) at Ev+0.40 eV.