Commercial indigenously made npn and pnp bipolar junction switching transistors used for space applications are investigated for 60Co γ-ray induced effects. The on-line as well as off-line measurements indicate that the forward current gain of the transistors decreases significantly as the accumulated dose increases. Excess base current model is employed to account for the current gain degradation. The pnp transistor undergoes as much degradation as the npn type. It is found that bulk degradation by displacement damage is the dominant mechanism leading to reduction in forward current gain of npn transistors. On the other hand it appears that, in addition to bulk damage, surface degradation due to accumulation of interface states at the silicon-silicon dioxide interface also contributes significantly to gain degradation in pnp transistor as evident from thermal annealing studies. Further, estimation reveals that the transistor with larger base width has higher displacement damage factor.
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