Silicon carbide transistor structures as detectors of weakly ionizing radiation

SiC-based nuclear radiation detectors figured prominently in the very first attempts of the 1960s to replace gas in ionization chambers with a more condensed semiconducting medium. However, the dynamics of improvement of SiC in those years was markedly inferior to the progress made in the development of competing materials. This study continues with the investigation of triode detector structures based on 'pure' SiC films. It is established that for weakly ionizing radiation (as also in the case of strongly ionizing alpha particles) the signal is amplified by no less than a factor of several tens. This allows SiC films with a thickness of about 10 μm to be used to detect penetrating radiation, e.g., X-rays, since the effective thickness of the films is on the order of hundreds of micrometers