Progress in detector properties of heteroepitaxial diamond grown by chemical vapor deposition on Ir/YSZ/Si(001) wafers

The development of CVD grown single-crystal Diamond-on-Iridium (DOI) sensors for charged-particle detection in hadrons and nuclei physics research is reviewed. A variety of samples grown at the University of Augsburg has been investigated with α and β sources in the laboratory, swift ions from the heavy-ion synchrotron SIS in Darmstadt, and relativistic protons from the COoler-SYnchrotron COSY in Jülich. The results obtained by means of I-E(V) studies, transient-current techniques (TCT), α-spectroscopy, and heavy-ion time-of-flight (ToF) measurements are compared to those of commercially available polycrystalline and homoepitaxial single crystal CVD diamond sensors of electronic grade quality. In many aspects, the performance of DOI sensors was found quite similar to that of homoepitaxial counters, and in any case far superior to that of polycrystalline detectors. Under single-carrier drift conditions, the CCE and energy resolution (δE/E) for holes reached levels CCEh > 95% and δE/Eh ~ 0.3%, respectively, which correspond to values of the Schubweg wh,e well above the detector thickness. In contrast, the CCEe for electrons was typically lower than ~40%, leading to appreciable reduction of the detection efficiency in the dual-carrier drift mode (CCE ~ 60%), which characterizes the experiments with swift heavy ions and high-energy particles. We measured transport parameters comparable to those of homoepitaxial devices: μ0h ~ 3080–1756 and μ0e ~ 2276–1150 cm2/Vs, vsath ~ (1.7–1.4) ∗ 107 and vsate ~ (1.5–1.0) ∗ 107 cm/s, as well as intrinsic time resolutions σi ~ 15 ps. It is shown, that substantial improvements have been achieved in recent years, albeit reproducibility and the understanding of the reduced electron collection remain challenging issues. Prime novelty: Comprehensive electrical characterization of intrinsic single-crystal CVD Diamond-On-Iridium sensors produced at the University of Augsburg and their classification into the range of commercial electronic grade polycrystalline and homoepitaxial diamond sensors supplied by Element Six.