Systematic Investigation of Acceptor Removal in HPK LGADs with Modified Gain Layers

TL;DR

This study systematically investigates various gain-layer modifications in LGAD sensors to enhance radiation tolerance, finding carbon implantation as the most effective approach among those tested.

Contribution

It provides experimental evidence that carbon implantation improves LGAD radiation tolerance, while other modifications show limited benefits.

Findings

Carbon implantation improves radiation tolerance of LGADs.

Oxygen modifications and gain-layer compensation are less effective.

Acceptor-removal coefficient varies with irradiation particle type and energy.

Abstract

Low-Gain Avalanche Diodes (LGADs) are fast silicon sensors with internal charge multiplication and are key candidates for precision timing layers in future high-energy hadron colliders. Their operation in harsh radiation environments, however, is limited by acceptor removal in the gain layer, which reduces the active acceptor concentration and degrades the internal electric field required for avalanche multiplication. Improving the radiation tolerance of the gain layer is therefore essential for future 4D tracking applications. In this work, we investigated several LGAD prototypes produced in collaboration with Hamamatsu Photonics K.K. (HPK), featuring modified gain-layer designs, including oxygen-modified, carbon-implanted, and boron--phosphorus compensated structures. The sensors were studied after proton and reactor-neutron irradiation. Radiation tolerance was characterized using the acceptor-removal coefficient extracted from IV measurements and the operation voltage required to recover the timing performance after irradiation. The results show that carbon implantation is the only approach among those studied here that provides a clear improvement in radiation tolerance. In contrast, neither oxygen-related modification, including the Partially Activated Boron (PAB) approach, nor gain-layer compensation alone yields a significant improvement, and the compensated carbon-implanted structure shows no clear advantage over the carbon-only case. In addition, the acceptor-removal coefficient is found to depend on the irradiation particle type and energy.