Radiation hardness of punch-through and FET biased silicon microstrip detectors

Silicon microstrip detectors can be biased with polysilicon resistors or Field Effect Transistor (FET) biasing structures. Polysilicon resistors are radiation hard, but using the FET biasing principle reduces processing costs and can give better noise performance. A set of microstrip detectors has been manufactured with a standard radiation sensor process in order to assess the radiation hardness of punch-through and FET biasing. Eight different bias geometry designs were used in order to study the effects of bias gap lengths and strip end geometries on the detector characteristics. The test detectors were irradiated at several dose levels up to 75 kGy with a 60Co source. lly the devices had very low oxide charge (3 × 1010 cm−2) and leakage current levels (60 pA per strip). The dynamic resistance was in the 1 GΩ range, which is higher than the values which can be achieved by conventional polysilicon resistors. Radiation exposure gave significant increases in the leakage current of the devices. This causes large reductions in the dynamic resistance, and detector performance will degrade. The degradation due to increased leakage current was present for all strip end geometries, and it could not be compensated by changing the gate voltage.