4H-SiC Detector in High Photons and Ions Irradiation Regime

A Silicon carbide detector, based on a Schottky diode technology with an interdigitated front electrode design, was employed to monitor photons and low-energy ions. Photons were generated by a He-Cd laser with maximum optical power density of 64 mW/cm², while a plasma generated by a pulsed laser at low intensity (10¹⁰ W/cm²), was used to produce low-energy Al and C ions. The measured detector yield in the case of the photon detection increases linearly with the optical power density, and shows saturation at high power densities, being the saturation value depending on the applied detector bias. A similar behavior is observed for ion detection, where the detector response saturates with increasing ion energy. Carrier generation rate was extracted from the experimental data obtaining almost equal values for photon and ion irradiations, allowing also to extract a maximum generation rate of about $8 \times 10^{19}$ carriers/cm $^{3}\cdot \text {s}$ as upper limit for the linear operation of the detector.