Detectors proposed for the International Linear Collider (ILC) incorporate a tungsten sampling calorimeter (`BeamCal) intended to reconstruct showers of electrons, positrons and photons that emerge from the interaction point of the collider with angl
es between 5 and 50 milliradians. For the innermost radius of this calorimeter, radiation doses at shower-max are expected to reach 100 MRad per year, primarily due to minimum-ionizing electrons and positrons that arise in the induced electromagnetic showers of e+e- `beamstrahlung pairs produced in the ILC beam-beam interaction. However, radiation damage to calorimeter sensors may be dominated by hadrons induced by nuclear interactions of shower photons, which are much more likely to contribute to the non-ionizing energy loss that has been observed to damage sensors exposed to hadronic radiation. We report here on the results of SLAC Experiment T-506, for which several different types of silicon diode sensors were exposed to doses of radiation induced by showering electrons of energy 3.5-10.6 GeV. By embedding the sensor under irradiation within a tungsten radiator, the exposure incorporated hadronic species that would potentially contribute to the degradation of a sensor mounted in a precision sampling calorimeter. Depending on sensor technology, efficient charge collection was observed for doses as large as 220 MRad.
The Santa Cruz Institute for Particle Physics (SCIPP) continues to be engaged in research and development towards an ILC detector. The latest efforts at SCIPP are described, including those associated with the LSTFE front-end readout ASIC, the use of
charge division to obtain a longitudinal coordinate from silicon strip detectors, and the contribution of strip resistance to readout noise.
