Interactions between Terrestrial Cosmic-Ray Neutrons and III–V Compound Semiconductors

Abstract

This work explores by numerical simulation the impact of high-energy atmospheric neutrons and their interactions with III-V binary compound semiconductors. The efforts have focused on eight III-V semiconductors: GaAs, AlAs, InP, InAs, GaSb, InSb, GaN, and GaP. For each material, extensive Geant4 numerical simulations have been performed considering a bulk target exposed to a neutron source emulating the atmospheric neutron spectrum at terrestrial level. Results emphasize in detail the reaction rates per type of reaction (elastic, inelastic, nonelastic) and offer a classification of all the neutron-induced secondary products as a function of their atomic number, kinetic energy, initial stopping power, and range. Implications for single-event effects (SEEs) are analyzed and discussed, notably in terms of energy and charge deposited in the bulk material and in the first nanometers of particle range with respect to the critical charge for modern complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technologies.

Radiation Response of Group-IV and III-V Semiconductors Subjected to D–D and D–T Fusion Neutrons

“…where σ i is the value at energy E of the cross section for isotope i (in barn), fi is the fraction of isotope i in the target isotopic composition, e is the target thickness, NV is the number of atoms per unit volume, and M is the number of incident monoenergetic neutrons; in this work, fixed to the arbitrary value of 5 Â 10 8 for standardization purpose (introduced in other previous studies [8][9][10], M initially corresponds to the number of atmospheric neutrons impacting a surface of 1 cm 2 at sea level exposed to natural radiation during 25 Â 10 6 h).…”

“…In the direct continuation of our previous works [8][9][10] that investigated the atmospheric radiation response of a wide variety of semiconductors, the present chapter focuses on the radiation response of Group IV (Si, Ge, SiC, diamond) and III-V (GaAs, GaN, GaP, GaSb, InAs, InP, InSb, AlAs) semiconductors subjected to D-D (2.45 MeV) and D-T (14 MeV) neutrons.…”

Electronics reliability assessment of future power fusion machines: Neutron interaction analysis in bulk silicon

“…where si is the value at energy E of the cross section for isotope i (in barn), fi is the fraction of isotope i in the target isotopic composition, e is the target thickness, N is the number of atoms per unit volume and M is the number of incident monoenergetic neutrons, in this work fixed to the arbitrary value M = 5´10 8 for standardization purpose (fixed in other studies [9][10][11], M corresponds to the number of high energy atmospheric neutrons -above 1 MeV -impacting a surface of 1 cm 2 at sea level exposed to natural radiation during 25´10 6 h).…”

“…In the present work, both MCNP6 and Geant4 were used. Geant4 version 4.9.4 patch 01 was used for these simulations following a methodology used in previous works [9][10][11]. In particular, the list of physical processes employed was based on the standard package of physics lists QGSP_BIC_HP [12].…”