HR: 1340h
AN: SH23B-0343    [Abstracts]
TI: SiC as an energetic particle detector
AU: Yan, F
EM: fyan@pop500.gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt Rd., Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Hicks, J
EM: j_sade0502@yahoo.com
AF: Case Western Reserve University, Dept of Engineering, Cleveland, OH 44106 United States
AU: * Shappirio, M
EM: mark.d.shappirio@nasa.gov
AF: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt Rd., Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Brown, S
EM: skbrown@pop300.gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt Rd., Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Smith, C
EM: csmith@pop300.gsfc.nasa.gov
AF: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt Rd., Greenbelt, MD 20771 United States
AU: Xin, X
EM: xinxb@ece.rutgers.edu
AF: Rutgers University, Dept of ECE, Piscataway, NJ 08854 United States
AU: Zhao, J H
EM: jzhao@ece.rutgers.edu
AF: Rutgers University, Dept of ECE, Piscataway, NJ 08854 United States
AB: Several new technologies have been introduced recently in the region of semiconductor material for solid state detectors (SSD). Of particular interest is silicon carbide (SiC) since its band gap is larger than that of pure silicon, reducing its dark current and making SiC capable of operating at high temperatures and more tolerant of radiation damage. But the trade off is that a higher band gap also means fewer electron hole pairs generated, and thus a smaller signal, for detecting incident radiation. To determine what the lower limit of SiC detectors to energetic particles is, we irradiated a SiC diode with particles ranging in energy from 50 keV to 1.6 MeV and masses from 1 to 16 amu. We found that the SiC detectors sensitivity was comparable to that of pure silicon, with the SiC detector being able to measure particles down to 50 keV/amu and possibly lower.
DE: 2774 Radiation belts
DE: 7514 Energetic particles (2114)
DE: 7847 Radiation processes
DE: 7894 Instruments and techniques
SC: SPA-Solar and Heliospheric Physics [SH]
MN: Fall Meeting 2005