Simulation of Single Particle Displacement Damage in Silicon - Part I: Global Approach and Primary Interaction Simulation

A comprehensive approach is developed for the simulation of Single Particle Displacement Damage in silicon, from the incident particle interaction in silicon, to the resulting electrical effect observed experimentally. The different steps of the global approach are described. The paper then focuses on the first step corresponding to Monte Carlo simulation of the primary interaction. The characteristics of the Primary Knock-On Atom (PKA) generated by neutron- or proton-silicon interactions for different energies are explored, analyzing in particular the PKA range in energies and species. This leads to the selection of 1 and 10 keV silicon atoms as good candidates to best represent the displacement cascades generated by all PKA. These PKA characteristics will be used as input in the following Molecular Dynamics simulation step, developed in a separate paper to simulate the displacement cascade generation and evolution. Monte Carlo simulations are also performed in a geometry representative of an image sensor, analyzing the distribution of non-ionizing deposited energy. The obtained distributions appear very similar for incident neutrons from 3 to 18 MeV and incident protons of 200 MeV, in agreement with similarities observed in experimentally measured dark current distributions in image sensors. The effect of geometric parameters on these distributions is finally explored.