Fast silicon diodes obtained by electron beams

The manufacture of semiconductor devices is one of the beneficiaries of electron accelerators. One method of controlling the device turnoff time is the irradiation of the device body. The paper relates to irradiation of chips, wafers and fast diodes to improve their electrical characteristics. The electron linear accelerator ALIN-7 was used to irradiate at room temperature and high temperature silicon diodes manufactured by Baneasa S.A. The influence of 7 MeV electron irradiation upon the main electrical characteristics has been examined for different absorbed doses and different irradiation temperatures. The dependence of the minority carrier lifetime, reverse recovery time and forward voltage on the radiation dose and the percentage distribution of the reverse recovery time for the irradiated diodes are presented. Some experimental facts related to electron irradiated or gold doped silicon pn junctions are presented. After junctions´ irradiation, the reverse recovery time decreases more than order of magnitude but the reverse current increase is not more than twice near room temperature