Silicon fragmentation under the effect of high-energy cosmic-ray protons

The results obtained by calculating the cross sections for the elastic and inelastic scattering of 50- to 1000-MeV protons interacting with (28)Si, which is the main integrated-circuit element of onboard spacecraft electronics, are presented along with the calculated mass, charge, and energy distributions of heavy products of respective nuclear reactions. To compare the results of the calculations with experimental data, similar calculations were performed for the p + (27)Al reaction. This comparison shows that the elasticand inelastic-scattering cross sections calculated by using the EMPIRE-II-19 code are in satisfactory agreement with available experimental data. Considerably wider scatter of available data is observed in the isotope and isobar yields. A high sensitivity of the kinetic spectrum of the final nuclei to the incident-proton energy is demonstrated.