The Boron–Oxygen (BᵢOᵢ) Defect Complex Induced by Irradiation With 23 GeV Protons in p-Type Epitaxial Silicon Diodes

In this work, the thermally stimulated current (TSC) technique has been used to investigate the properties of the radiation-induced interstitial boron and interstitial oxygen defect complex by 23-GeV ( $E_{\text {kin}}$ ) protons, including activation energy, defect concentration, as well as the annealing behavior. At first isothermal annealing (at 80 °C for 0–180 min) followed by isochronal annealing (for 15 min between 100 °C and 190 °C in steps of 10 °C), studies had been performed in order to get information about the thermal stability of the interstitial boron and interstitial oxygen defect in 50- $\Omega $ cm material after irradiation with 23-GeV protons to a fluence of $6.91\times 10^{13}\,\,{\text {p/cm}^{2}}$ . The results are presented and discussed. Furthermore, the extracted data from TSC measurements are compared with the macroscopic properties derived from current–voltage and capacitance–voltage characteristics. In addition, the introduction rate of interstitial boron and interstitial oxygen defect as a function of the initial doping concentration was determined by exposing diodes with different resistivities (10, 50, 250, and 2 $\text{k}\Omega $ cm) to 23-GeV protons. These results are compared with data from TSC and deep-level transient spectroscopy measurements achieved by the team of the CERN-RD50 “Acceptor removal project.”