A microscopic model of energy deposition in silicon slabs exposed to high-energy protons

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Abstract
A parameter free, microscopic model has been formulated to study the energy deposition due to protons bombarding silicon samples. The model is based on a Monte Carlo technique and uses two sets of essential and fundamental quantities from nuclear physics and condensed matter physics, the energy spectra and angular distributions of light fragments and heavy recoil nuclei from proton induced reactions, and the stopping power of ions through condensed media. Our model calculations are found to agree very well with the pulse-height spectra measured by McNulty, Farrell, and Tucker [IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. NS-28, 4007 (1981)] and by Farrell and McNulty [IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci. NS-29, 2012 (1982)] for thin slabs of silicon (8.7–200 μm) exposed to protons at various energies (86–158 MeV). We present a critical analysis of the contributions of various spallation products to the total spectra and discuss the physical implications of such results for semiconductor devices.