Study of a solid state microdosemeter based on a monolithic silicon telescope: irradiations with low-energy neutrons and direct comparison with a cylindrical TEPC

Abstract

A silicon device based on the monolithic silicon telescope technology coupled to a tissue-equivalent converter was proposed and investigated for solid state microdosimetry. The detector is constituted by a ΔE stage about 2 µm in thickness geometrically segmented in a matrix of micrometric diodes and a residual-energy measurement stage E about 500 µm in thickness. Each thin diode has a cylindrical sensitive volume 9 µm in nominal diameter, similar to that of a cylindrical tissue-equivalent proportional counter (TEPC). The silicon device and a cylindrical TEPC were irradiated in the same experimental conditions with quasi-monoenergetic neutrons of energy between 0.64 and 2.3 MeV at the INFN-Legnaro National Laboratories (LNL-INFN, Legnaro, Italy). The aim was to study the capability of the silicon-based system of reproducing microdosimetric spectra similar to those measured by a reference microdosemeter. The TEPC was set in order to simulate a tissue site about 2 μm in diameter. The spectra of the energy imparted to the ▵E stage of the silicon telescope were corrected for tissue-equivalence through an optimized procedure that exploits the information from the residual energy measurement stage E. A geometrical correction based on parametric criteria for shape-equivalence was also applied. The agreement between the dose distributions of lineal energy and the corresponding mean values is satisfactory at each neutron energy considered.