**Author details**

Ge, 256 for C, 299 for SiC, 542 for GaAs, and 420 for GaN. These data show that germanium corresponds to the worst case and diamond (also SiC) to the best case with regard to production mechanisms of single events, Si, GaAs, and GaN being relatively equivalent with respect to this criterion. This result can be for the most part explained by the values of the average energy for creation of an electron–hole pair which is very low for Ge (2.9 eV) and extremely

**Figure 12.** Number of electron-hole pairs created in the different target semiconductor materials by conversion of the total energy deposited by all the secondary products (**Figure 11**), taking into account the average energy for creation of

**Figure 11.** Total energy deposited by all the secondary products induced by neutron interactions in the different target

In this chapter, we presented a detailed study using extensive Geant4 numerical simulation of nuclear events resulting from the interaction of atmospheric neutrons at the terrestrial level with a target layer composed of various group-IV and III-V semiconductor materials including silicon, germanium, silicon carbide, carbon-diamond, gallium arsenide, and gallium nitride materials. The neutron interaction responses of these different semiconductors have been finely compared in terms of nuclear processes, recoil products, secondary ion production, and fragment energy distributions. Our results show that Si exhibits the

important for C (12 eV).

an electron-hole pair given in **Table 1**.

semiconductor materials.

132 Numerical Simulations in Engineering and Science

**4. Conclusion**

Daniela Munteanu and Jean-Luc Autran\*

\*Address all correspondence to: jean-luc.autran@univ-amu.fr

Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, Université de Toulon, Marseille, France
