Characterization of Czochralski Silicon Detectors

This thesis describes the characterization of irradiated and non-irradiated segmenteddetectors made of high-resistivity (>1 kΩcm) magnetic Czochralski (MCZ) silicon. It isshown that the radiation hardness (RH) of the protons of these detectors is higher thanthat of devices made of traditional materials such as Float Zone (FZ) silicon or DiffusionOxygenated Float Zone (DOFZ) silicon due to the presence of intrinsic oxygen (> 5 x1017 cm-3). The MCZ devices therefore present an interesting alternative for future highenergy physics experiments. In the large hadron collider (LHC), the RH of the detectorsis a critical issue due to the high luminosity (1034 cm-2s-1) corresponding to the expectedtotal fluencies of fast hadrons above 1015 cm-2. This RH improvement is important sinceradiation damage in the detector bulk material reduces the detector performance andbecause some of the devices produced from standard detector-grade silicon, e.g. FZsilicon with negligible oxygen concentration, might not survive the planned operationalperiod of the LHC experiments.In this work, segmented detectors and test structures were processed, measured, irradiatedwith different particles (protons of different energies, neutrons and high-energy electrons)and tested with a 60Co gamma source and with high-energy muon and pion beams. Theelectrical characterizations show that, for proton irradiation, the MCZ silicon issignificantly radiation harder than traditionally used detector materials. In gammairradiation, MCZ silicon detectors behave similarly to the DOFZ silicon detectors. Forneutron radiation, there is only a small difference between MCZ silicon and the referencedevices made of standard FZ silicon. The beam test results with the full-size detectorsshow that the properties of the high-resistivity MCZ silicon are suitable for particledetection both before and after heavy proton irradiation.