Application of GRAS Tool to study performance degradation of HPGe detector due to radiation damage

Year
2014
Author(s)
Mudit Mishra - Nuclear Engineering and Technology Programme, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Shikha Prasad - Nuclear Engineering and Technology Programme, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur
Abstract
When subjected to high energy particles, HPGe detectors degrade due to irradiation resulting in error in the output. Semiconductor detectors are generally used in areas where high level of accuracy is involved like nuclear security and space missions. Geant4 is an open source object- oriented simulation toolkit that offers a wide set of electromagnetic and hadronic physics models. GRAS is a Geant4 based tool that provides a general space radiation analysis for 3D geometry models. GRAS allows the definition of a multi-volume 3D geometry and incident particle source. Then, using the Geant4 toolkit it simulates radiation transport through the geometry of detector, treating electromagnetic and nuclear interactions. High energy neutrons have a major role in irradiation of semiconductor detectors and degradation due to these neutrons is considered. Total ionizing dose (TID) and Non-ionizing energy loss (NIEL) dose are calculated to study performance degradation in HPGe detectors.