Hydrogenated amorphous silicon pixel detectors for minimum ionizing particles

A novel low noise hydrogenated amorphous silicon pixel detector

Firsts results on particle detection using a novel silicon pixel detector are presented. The sensor consists of an array of 48 squar pixels with 380 lm pitch based on a n–i–p hydrogenated amorphous silicon (a-Si:H) film deposited on top of a VLSI chip. Th deposition was performed by VHF-PECVD, which enables high rate deposition up to 2 nm/s. Direct particle detection using bet particles from Ni...

Pixel Detectors for Charged Particles

Pixel Detectors, as the current technology of choice for the innermost vertex detection, have reached a stage at which large detectors have been built for the LHC experiments and a new era of developments, both for hybrid and for monolithic or semi-monolithic pixel detectors is in full swing. This is largely driven by the requirements of the upgrade programme for the superLHC and by other colli...

Luminescence quenching in erbiumdoped hydrogenated amorphous silicon

Mechanisms of metastability in hydrogenated amorphous silicon

We survey theoretical approaches to understanding the diverse metastable behavior in hydrogenated amorphous silicon. We discuss a recently developed network-rebonding model involving bonding rearrangements of silicon and hydrogen atoms. Using tight-binding molecular dynamics we find non-radiative recombination can break weak silicon bonds with low activation energies, producing dangling bond–fl...

Stable transistors in hydrogenated amorphous silicon

Thin-film field-effect transistors in hydrogenated amorphous silicon are notoriously unstable due to the formation of silicon dangling bond trapping states in the accumulated channel region during operation. Here, we show that by using a source-gated transistor a major improvement in stability is obtained. This occurs because the electron quasi-Fermi level is pinned near the center of the band ...