April 19, 2018

Radiation Defects in Silicon Crystals

The latest experimental results on Si crystal ultrafast irradiation by AREAL electron beam, conducted by the research team (head Prof. H. Yeritsyan) from A. I. Alikhanian National Science Laboratory (YerPhI) have been published online in Springer Journal of Electronic Materials (H. Yeritsyan et al., “The Use of Different Pulsed Electron Irradiation for the Formation of Radiation Defects in Silicon Crystals, 13 April 2018).
The formation of structural defects in the lattice of silicon (n-Si) single crystals under ultrashort electron beam irradiation of different intensities and pulse lengths is presented. The samples were studied by means of the Hall effect measurements of electro-physical parameters as a function of temperature and radiation dose. The role of the radiation current density is discussed, which gives rise to a peculiar behavior in the electrical-physical properties of n-Si. In particular, thermal processes are found not to develop, due to the ultrafast nature of the incident radiation, which causes an almost “pure” energy interaction to occur between the radiation and the atoms within the crystal, and the formation of cluster defects. A scheme for the radiation defects formation in time-scale is discussed.