Improvements in realizing 4H-SiC thermal neutron detectors

In this work we presented two types of 4H-SiC semiconductor detectors (D1 and D2) both based on ion implantation of ¹⁰B inside the aluminum metallic contact. The first detector shows a high leakage current after the implantation and low signal to noise ratio. However, improvements concerning the implantation parameters and the distance between the implanted ¹⁰B thermal neutron converter layer and the active pn-junction have led to low leakage current and thus to higher signal to noise ratio. This proves the strength of this new method of realizing sensitive SiC-based thermal neutron detectors. (authors)