Silicon Junctions as Particle Spectrometers

Abstract
Both Au-Si surface barriers and silicon p-n junctions operate satisfactorily as particle spectrometers. The use of high resistivity material gives a depletion region wide enough to stop high-energy protons, α particles, and heavier ions. A resolution of 16 kev (width at half-maximum) for 6.04 mev α particles is obtained with a junction depletion layer sufficient to stop 10 mev α particles. With the depletion region very close to the surface, ß particles in the range from 10 kev to several hundred kev are detectable. The pulse amplitude distribution from Co 57 indicates the presence of the two well-known lines at 115 and 129 kev. An attempt has been made to correlate the observed performance with the semiconductor parameters and the diode static characteristics.

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