Average energy expended per ionized electron-hole pair for α particles in Si(Li)

New results have been obtained for the temperature dependence of ε, the average energy required to create an electron-hole pair by ionizing radiation, for α particles incident on lithium-drifted silicon surface barrier detectors. For temperatures between 31 and 291??K, the application of fields up to 10₄ v/cm resulted in a saturated pulse height, which eliminated the necessity for extrapolation procedures to determine ε. Between 4.2 and 31??K pulse height saturation was not observed. Below 31??K the presence of both fast and slow risetime components in the detector pulse prevented an accurate determination of the pulse height. A significant difference between the present results and those previously reported is that ε plotted vs the energy gap gives a linear curve over the entire range reported (31-291??K).