A combined approach to the simulation of ionizing radiation effects in silicon devices

Abstract

Silicon devices (both pixels and microstrips) have been widely used in the past years in High Energy Physics experiments and also in other applications involving the detection of ionizing radiation such as medical imaging and dosimetry. The simulation of the silicon devices response to ionizing radiation is an important step needed to understand the performances in terms of signal, noise, spatial and energy resolution as a function of several technology parameters like doping profile, geometrical dimensions, bias voltage. These simulations are routinely carried out using two separate approaches (and tools): radiation interaction with a geometrically segmented silicon material (GEANT4, FLUKA, PENELOPE) taking into account the physical processes and giving as output the deposited energy; transport of generated electron/hole pairs through the device with electronic signal formation (SENTAURUS-TCAD). In this work we propose a new combined approach using both methods, applied to the case of CMOS pixel sensor, to obtain a better understanding of the behavior of the devices.