Analytical and Numerical Investigation of Nanowire Transistor X-ray Detector

Abstract

Recently, nanowire detectors have been attracting increasing interest thanks to their advantages of high resolution and gain. The potential of using nanowire detectors is investigated in this work by developing a physically based model for Indium Phosphide (InP) phototransistor as well as by performing TCAD simulations. The model is based on solving the basic semiconductor equations for bipolar transistors and considering the effects of charge distribution on the bulk and on the surface. The developed model also takes into consideration the impact of surface traps, which are induced by photogenerated carriers situated at the surface of the nanowire. Further, photogating phenomena and photodoping are also included. Moreover, displacement damage (DD) is also investigated; an issue arises when the detector is exposed to repeated doses. The presented analytical model can predict the current produced from the incident X-ray beam at various energies. The calculation of the gain of the presented nanowire carefully considers the different governing effects at several values of energies as well as biasing voltage and doping. The proposed model is built in MATLAB, and the validity check of the model results is achieved using SILVACO TCAD device simulation. Comparisons between the proposed model results and SILVACO TCAD device simulation are provided and show good agreement.