High energy heavy ion irradiation of silicon

In the search of defect creation by a mechanism involving collective electron excitation, samples of silicon are irradiated by Kr and Xe ions, the energies of which were 3.7 and 3.5 GeV, respectively. The damage is investigated using the in-situ resistance measurement on samples piled-up along the beam direction for the high electronic stopping power range between 3.7 to 14 MeV/μm. A normalization of all the data by the number of displaced atoms per atom resulting from elastic collisions shows that inelastic collisions are inefficient in the defect creation. (author)