Comparison of Heavy Ion- and Laser-Induced Sensitive Volumes in an Epitaxial Silicon Diode

Abstract

Sensitive volumes are useful models for predicting error rates of devices in radiation environments. A heavy ion and pulsed laser induced collected charge sensitive volume is developed for an epitaxial silicon diode from experiments at two different bias conditions. The ion and laser based sensitive volumes show good correlation with their respective experimental results. However, the ion and laser based sensitive volumes are found to differ at the low bias condition, when the diode is not fully depleted, while they are similar at the higher, fully depleted bias condition. This leads to differences in the amount of collected charge predicted between the two sensitive volumes at the lower bias. Differences in potential modulation between the charge deposition methods explains the differences between the ion and laser based sensitive volumes at the lower bias. Truncation of potential modulation by the highly doped substrate at the higher bias results in similar sensitive volumes.