Progress in the development of large-area, ultra-thin silicon detectors for space-based applications

Abstract

Silicon solid-state detectors have been used in the past to measure the energy deposit dE/dx and total energy E of solar and galactic energetic particles in order to derive their mass and charge and hence to study composition of particle populations in space. The lower energy limit of the measurement is set by the total energy required to penetrate the dE/dx detector. In order to sample the range of kinetic energies per nucleon down to about lMeV, of interest for solar particle studjes, the dE/dx detector thickness cannot exceed 10-20 pm. Very thin silicon membranes, however, are quite fragile and have thus been limited in their practical sizes to less than a few cm2, which reduces their applicability in the study of less abundant species. This paper presents some of the progress in the current JPUCaltech effo11s to produce large area monolithic silicon devices with thicknesses in the range ,.._, I 0 to 20μm.

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