Lithium ion irradiation of silicon diodes

The high fluences (up to 10^16 1-MeV equivalent neutrons/cm^2) needed for testing the detector prototypes for the future very high luminosity colliders present strong constraints because long irradiation times are required at the currently available proton irradiation facilities. Energetic (58 MeV) lithium ions present a hardness factor which is at least 27.3 (84.7) times higher than 27 MeV (24 GeV) protons, and consequently are a new promising radiation source for investigating the radiation hardness of silicon detectors up to very high particle fluences. In this study we present for the first time: 1) the characteristics of the degradation (leakage current density increase and depletion voltage variations) induced in state-of-the-art silicon diodes processed on standard, oxygenated and epitaxial silicon substrates by high energy Li ions; 2) how the Li ion induced damage can be correlated to that of hadron