Radiation hardness characteristics of self-powered detector based on SiC/Si heterojunction diode

Self-powered detectors offer an excellent option for space radiation detection, owing to its high charge collection efficiency, excellent energy resolution and independent power supply. This study demonstrates a self-powered alpha-particle detector using SiC and Si heterojunction structure. Owing to the proper detector structure and fabrication method, the self-powered detector exhibited a low dark current (21.9 nA/cm(2)@50 V), excellent rectification properties, high energy resolution (1.94 % for a 5.275 MeV alpha-particle), and outstanding gammaray radiation resistance (1.25 MeV gamma-ray emitted by Co-60 isotopes). The current-voltage (I-V) and capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics and the energy performance changes before and after irradiation revealed that the detector successfully survived an ultra-high radiation dose of 500 krad, at least four times higher than the conventional Si SDD and PIN radiation detector. Therefore, besides its low power consumption, this detector has excellent detection performance in harsh radiation fields.