Tests of the radiation hardness of VLSI integrated circuits and silicon strip detectors for the SSC under neutron, proton, and gamma irradiation

As part of a program to develop a silicon strip central tracking detector system for the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) we are studying the effects of radiation damage in silicon detectors and their associated front-end readout electronics. In this paper, the authors report on the results of neutron and proton irradiations at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) and γ-ray irradiations at U.C. Santa Cruz (UCSC). Individual components on single-sided AC-coupled silicon strip detectors and on test structures were tested. Circuits fabricated in a radiation hard CMOS process and individual transistors fabricated using dielectric isolation bipolar technology were also studied. Results indicate that a silicon strip tracking detector system should have a lifetime of at least one decade at the SSC