Impact of the divacancy (?) on the generation-recombination properties of 10 MeV proton irradiated Float-Zone silicon diodes

In this paper, the correlation between the microscopic damage parameters and the macroscopic device performance degradation is investigated for 10 MeV proton-irradiated Float-Zone (FZ) silicon diodes, with n- and p-type doping density in the 1014 cm−3 range. It is shown that the radiation-induced deep-level concentrations, obtained from deep-level transient spectroscopy show a proportional increase with the proton fluence, for the dominant traps and this both in n- and p-type substrates. The same applies for the increase in the reverse diode current and the reduction of the inverse carrier recombination lifetime. The obtained spectroscopic information is substituted in the Shockley–Read–Hall model for the diode reverse current and recombination lifetime. From the comparison between calculated and measured parameters, it is concluded that in proton-irradiated diodes fabricated in FZ p- and n-type substrates, the divacancy related deep-level centres at Ec−0.42 eV play a dominant role in both the generation and the recombination lifetime.