Time dependent modeling of single particle displacement damage in silicon devices

•We propose a multiscale model to study the annealing kinetics of SPDD events.•We report annealing factors of SPDD current attributed to the evolution of defects.•The annealing of SPDD current is mainly caused by self-annihilation of IV clusters.•Few primary defects can be captured by impurities under neutron irradiation.•Insufficient annealing of damage at RT is due to stability of small defect clusters.

An approach combining molecular dynamics simulations with Kinetic Monte Carlo simulations is proposed to model the temporal evolution of single particle displacement damage in silicon. The three dimensional distributions of primary defects induced by Si recoils within 10 ps are obtained by molecular dynamics simulations and subsequently the long-term evolution (over 105 s) of multiple types of defects is simulated with Kinetic Monte Carlo technique fed by molecular simulation results. Based on classical Shockley–Read–Hall theory, the annealing factors of radiation-induced dark current related to the evolution of defects are predicted for photodiodes of 0.18 μm CMOS image sensors under neutron irradiation. The calculation results are consistent with the experimental data.