Very-High-Energy Heavy Ion Beam Dosimetry using Solid State Detectors for Electronics Testing

Very-high-energy (VHE), heavy ions are of particular interest for single event effects testing due to their combination of high linear energy transfer (LET) and high penetration within electronics components. The dosimetry of such beams poses an important challenge for facilities aiming to provide VHE ions for radiation effects testing. In this paper, ion beam dosimetry using a silicon solid state detector is presented for uranium ions in the 100 – 1000 MeV per nucleon kinetic energy range. The study involves a combination of experimental measurements carried out at the SIS18 accelerator at GSI and Monte Carlo simulation studies using FLUKA. Particular emphasis was put on to the physical basis of interaction between both primary beam particles as well as secondary fragments, and the detector device. Our results demonstrate an excellent capability of understanding key beam properties and extracting the LET through comparison with simulation results. This benchmark study acts as a reference for developing and utilizing a heavy ion electronics testing infrastructure currently under development at CERN.