학술논문

Radiation damage caused by cold neutrons in boron doped CMOS active pixel sensors
Document Type
Working Paper
Source
Journal of Instrumentation, Volume 12, May 2017, p. C05011
Subject
Physics - Instrumentation and Detectors
Language
Abstract
CMOS Monolithic Active Pixel Sensors (MAPS) are considered as an emerging technology in the field of charged particle tracking. They will be used in the vertex detectors of experiments like STAR, CBM and ALICE and are considered for the ILC and the tracker of ATLAS. In those applications, the sensors are exposed to sizeable radiation doses. While the tolerance of MAPS to ionizing radiation and fast hadrons is well known, the damage caused by low energy neutrons was not studied so far. Those slow neutrons may initiate nuclear fission of $^{10}$B dopants found in the B-doped silicon active medium of MAPS. This effect was expected to create an unknown amount of radiation damage beyond the predictions of the NIEL (Non Ionizing Energy Loss) model for pure silicon. We estimate the impact of this effect by calculating the additional NIEL created by this fission. Moreover, we show first measured data for CMOS sensors which were irradiated with cold neutrons. The empirical results contradict the prediction of the updated NIEL model both, qualitatively and quantitatively: The sensors irradiated with slow neutrons show an unexpected and strong acceptor removal, which is not observed in sensors irradiated with MeV neutrons.
Comment: This is an author-created, un-copyedited version of an article published in Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment. IOP Publishing Ltd is not responsible for any errors or omissions in this version of the manuscript or any version derived from it. The Version of Record is available online at the link below.