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Faculty of Natural and Agricultural Sciences
School of Physical Sciences
Department of Physics
Selected Highlights from Research Findings
GaN and ZnO are wide bandgap materials that can be used for UV detection. If used in spacecraft as UV detectors, these materials are exposed to a harsh radiation environment. We have compared the radiation-hardness of these two materials by irradiating them with MeV protons in our van de Graaff
accelerator. Schottky barrier diodes were used as probes to study the electrical properties of the irradiated material.
The experiment revealed that ZnO is more that 100 times radiation harder than GaN. It would therefore last 100 times longer in space as a UV detector. The defects that govern this unusual radiation hardness are still under investigation.
Preliminary results have shown that some of them can only be observed two weeks after irradiation and that these anneal out when storing the irradiated ZnO at room temperature
Contact person: Prof FD Auret.
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