Development of Neutron Transmutation Doped Silicon Detectors

Abstract

  High resistivity n-type silicon crystals have been produced from ultra-pure p-type silicon crystals by using the neutron transmutation doping technique. The materials produced by this method have better dopant homogeneity and controllability than carefully produced floating zone crystals. The neutron irradiated silicon crystals have recovered the minority carrier lifetime from an unmeasurably small value to a value of 1 ms after thermal annealing of only 10 min using an infrared lamp furnace. The characteristics of a variation of detectors made from this material are equivalent to those of the conventional silicon detectors.