Determination of the uniformity of the carrier lifetime in a material from the profile of the amplitude spectrum of an ion detector

An analysis is made of charge transport in the neutral base of a p +-n structure as a result of its diffusion to the boundary of the p-n junction under conditions where nonequilibrium carriers are generated by single α-particles. It is assumed that nonuniformity of the carrier lifetime (τ), described by a Gaussian distribution, exists over the area of the structure. The profile of the transported charge spectrum is calculated for these conditions and its correlation with the measure of nonuniformity τ is obtained. Since the tracks of the diffusing α-particles occupy an extremely small volume, recording them is equivalent to local probing of the material for τ. It is suggested that the calculated function should be used as a calibration function to determine the spread of τ values in materials. The method is tested on Si for a surface-barrier structure by recording 8.78 MeV π-particles.

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