Silicon Doped with Sulfur as a Detector Material for High Speed Infrared Image Converters

Abstract

The work aims at approaching the solution of the problem of developing sensitive silicon detectors for high speed IR imaging devices which are semiconductor – gas discharge systems. Among the requirements to detectors is their operation at the temperature which is somewhat higher than that of liquid nitrogen. To meet this requirement, a set of deep impurities is analyzed. It is emphasized that silicon doped with sulphur is a good choice to reach the aim. The doping of silicon with sulphur is done by the technique of high temperature diffusion. Data of the Hall measurements indicate the presence of large density of shallow donor levels in the material obtained. To compensate them, acceptors are introduced afterwards with using radiation doping techniques. Testing of the fabricated detectors in the converter setup shows that they provide imaging of IR fields of temperature T ~ 270 0C with the temporal resolution in the order of 3 µs.