Permanent Damage Introduced by Single Particles Incident on Silicon Devices

Analytical and experimental studies of the effects of permanent damage introduced in silicon devices by single particles have been performed. Calculation of dark current increases produced by a single neutron or alpha particle incident on a device depletion region suggests that problems may be encountered in certain VLSI circuits, such as imaging arrays. Determinations of the energy and angular distributions of primary knock-on atoms in 14-MeV neutron-irradiated silicon are presented. These distributions are employed in a distributed cluster model in an attempt to account for measured resistance changes in irradiated pinch resistors.