The Boron-Oxygen (BO) Defect Complex Induced by Irradiation with 23 GeV Protons in p-Type Epitaxial Silicon Diodes

Abstract

In this work, the thermally stimulated current (TSC) technique has been used to investigate the properties of the radiation-induced interstitial boron and interstitial oxygen defect complex by 23-GeV ( $E_{\text {kin}}$ ) protons, including activation energy, defect concentration, as well as the annealing behavior. At first isothermal annealing (at 80 °C for 0-180 min) followed by isochronal annealing (for 15 min between 100 °C and 190 °C in steps of 10 °C), studies had been performed in order to get information about the thermal stability of the interstitial boron and interstitial oxygen defect in 50- $\Omega $ cm material after irradiation with 23-GeV protons to a fluence of $6.91\times 10^{13}\,\,{\text {p/cm}^{2}}$. The results are presented and discussed. Furthermore, the extracted data from TSC measurements are compared with the macroscopic properties derived from current-voltage and capacitance-voltage characteristics. In addition, the introduction rate of interstitial boron and interstitial oxygen defect as a function of the initial doping concentration was determined by exposing diodes with different resistivities (10, 50, 250, and 2 $\text{k}\Omega $ cm) to 23-GeV protons. These results are compared with data from TSC and deep-level transient spectroscopy measurements achieved by the team of the CERN-RD50 'Acceptor removal project.