Tests of the radiation hardness of VLSI integrated circuits and silicon strip detectors for the SSC under neutron, proton, and gamma irradiation

As part of a program to develop a silicon strip central tracking detector system for the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC), the effects of radiation damage in silicon detectors and their associated front-end readout electronics are being studied. The authors report on the results of neutron and proton irradiations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and γ-ray irradiations at UC Santa Cruz. Individual components on single-sided AC-coupled silicon strip detectors and on test structures were tested. Circuits fabricated in a radiation-hard CMOS process and individual transistors fabricated using dielectric isolation bipolar technology were also studied. Bulk damage to the silicon itself is seen as the limiting factor in the lifetime of a detector system. In particular, it is the acceptor site creation in the active volume of the silicon detector that will limit the lifetime to approximately 10 yr for the innermost detectors