This paper provides a historical review of the literature on the effects of radiation-induced displacement damage in semiconductor materials and devices. Emphasis is placed on effects in technologically important bulk silicon and silicon devices. The primary goals are to provide a guide to displacement damage literature, to offer critical comments regarding that literature in an attempt to identify key findings, to describe how the understanding of displacement damage mechanisms and effects has evolved, and to note current trends. Selected tutorial elements are included as an aid to presenting the review information more clearly and to provide a frame of reference for the terminology used. The primary approach employed is to present information qualitatively while leaving quantitative details to the cited references. A bibliography of key displacement-damage information sources is also provided.

Review of displacement damage effects in silicon devices

Effect of oxygen-deficiency on electrical transport properties of tungsten trioxide crystals.

GalliumNitridebasedhighelectronmobilitytransistors(HEMTs)areattractiveforuseinhighpowerandhighfrequencyapplications, with higher breakdown voltages and two dimensional electron gas (2DEG) density compared to their GaAs counterparts. Specific applications for nitride HEMTs include air, land and satellite based communications and phased array radar. Highly efficient GaNbased blue light emitting diodes (LEDs) employ AlGaN and InGaN alloys with different compositions integrated into heterojunctions and quantum wells. The realization of these blue LEDs has led to white light sources, in which a blue LED is used to excite a phosphor material; light is then emitted in the yellow spectral range, which, combined with the blue light, appears as white. Alternatively, multiple LEDs of red, green and blue can be used together. Both of these technologies are used in high-efficiency white electroluminescent light sources. These light sources are efficient and long-lived and are therefore replacing incandescent and fluorescent lamps for general lighting purposes. Since lighting represents 20‐30% of electrical energy consumption, and because GaN white light LEDs require ten times less energy than ordinary light bulbs, the use of efficient blue LEDs leads to significant energy savings. GaN-based devices are more radiation hard than their Si and GaAs counterparts due to the high bond strength in III-nitride materials. The response of GaN to radiation damage is a function of radiation type, dose and energy, as well as the carrier density, impurity content and dislocation density in the GaN. The latter can act as sinks for created defects and parameters such as the carrier removal rate due to trapping of carriers into radiation-induced defects depends on the crystal growth method used to grow the GaN layers. The growth method has a clear effect on radiation response beyond the carrier type and radiation source. We review data on the radiation resistance of AlGaN/GaN and InAlN/GaN HEMTs and GaN‐based LEDs to different types of ionizing radiation, and discuss ion stopping mechanisms. The primary energy levels introduced by different forms of radiation, carrier removal rates and role of existing defects in GaN are discussed. The carrier removal rates are a function of initial carrier concentration and dose but not of dose rate or hydrogen concentration in the nitride material grown by Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition. Proton and electron irradiation damage in HEMTs creates positive threshold voltage shifts due to a decrease in the two dimensional electron gas concentration resulting from electron trapping at defect sites, as well as a decrease in carrier mobility and degradation of drain current and transconductance. State-of-art simulators now provide accurate predictions for the observed changes in radiation-damaged HEMT performance. Neutron irradiation creates more extended damage regions and at high doses leads to Fermi level pinning while 60 Co γ-ray irradiation leads to much smaller changes in HEMT drain current relative to the other forms of radiation. In InGaN/GaN blue LEDs irradiated with protons at fluences near 10 14 cm −2 or electrons at fluences near 10 16 cm −2 , both current-voltage and light output-current characteristics are degraded with increasing proton dose. The optical performance of the LEDs is more sensitive to the proton or electron irradiation than that of the corresponding electrical performances. © The Author(s) 2015. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/2.0251602jss/pdf

Review—Ionizing Radiation Damage Effects on GaN Devices

The Hall mobility in semiconductors and insulators can be greatly affected by inhomogeneous impurity distributions. This is due to the formation of large space‐charge regions surrounding local inhomogeneities. The scattering cross section of Coulombic centers can be increased by over an order of magnitude when inhomogeneously distributed. The mobility resulting from scattering from inhomogeneities varies roughly as T−½ and decreases with decreasing carrier concentration. Assuming that inhomogeneities can occur frequently, various anomalous Hall mobility effects can be explained, such as mobility ``killers'' in GaAs, InAs, and InP; giant scattering cross sections in GaAs, InP, CdS, and CdSe; abnormally low mobilities in compensated InAs; and low mobilities in ZnO containing precipitates.

Anomalous Mobility Effects in Some Semiconductors and Insulators

A review of the effects of proton, neutron, γ-ray, and electron irradiation on GaN materials and devices is presented. Neutron irradiation tends to create disordered regions in the GaN, while the damage from the other forms of radiation is more typically point defects. In all cases, the damaged region contains carrier traps that reduce the mobility and conductivity of the GaN and at high enough doses, a significant degradation of device performance. GaN is several orders of magnitude more resistant to radiation damage than GaAs of similar doping concentrations. In terms of heterostructures, preliminary data suggests that the radiation hardness decreases in the order AlN/GaN > AlGaN/GaN > InAlN/GaN, consistent with the average bond strengths in the Al-based materials.

Review of radiation damage in GaN-based materials and devices

The width and depth of the potential wells surrounding disordered regions in neutron irradiated n‐type germanium and extrinsic silicon are estimated. Numerical examples of well dimensions for a wide range of sample characteristics are presented. Some effects of disordered regions, e.g., (a) scattering of conduction electrons, (b) absorption of holes, and (c) polarizability, are discussed.

B. R. Gossick

Papers

Disordered Regions in Semiconductors Bombarded by Fast Neutrons