Intrinsic Neutron Sensitivity of GaN and Radiation Effects on Forward-Biased Devices

Year
2015
Author(s)
Jie Qiu - Nuclear Engineering Program, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The Ohio State University
Padhraic Mulligan - Nuclear Engineering Program, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The Ohio State University
Chung-Han Lin - Electrical & Computer Engineering, The Ohio State University
Leonard Brillson - Electrical & Computer Engineering, The Ohio State University
R. Gregory Downing - Material Measurement Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology
Lei Cao - Nuclear Engineering Program, Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, The Ohio State University
Abstract
Gallium nitride (GaN) is a wide bandgap semiconductor material that is suitable for radiation detection in fuel cycle facilities where the temperature is high and the radiation is intense. Although alpha particle spectra have been measured with GaN, this work focuses on radiation hardness evaluation using commercial GaN quantum-well light-emitting diodes (LEDs) as a reference. Both the electrical and optical properties of GaN LEDs were characterized before and after neutron irradiation. The light emission intensity was found to increase significantly after 1014 n/cm2 of neutron irradiation. The extracted values from the I-V curve before and after irradiation also demonstrate quality improvements of the GaN LED after 1014 n/cm2 of neutron irradiation. Moreover, neutron depth profiling (NDP) is performed on GaN materials to measure the proton energy spectrum from the 14N(n,p)14C reaction. The results support the viability of the GaN detector as an intrinsic neutron detector on account of its abundance of N atoms.