Study and characterization of a photodiode for radiation measurement

Abstract

This work is a contribution to the instrument radiation measurement for the nuclear electronic laboratory of the center by the introduction, for the first time, through this work of a new semiconductor detector, which is the PIN photodiode. Recently PIN photodiode (originally suited for light detection) are used as radiation detectors in various applications such spectroscopy of X and gamma rays (100% efficiency up to 10 keV), and charged particles (up to 12 MeV) for the identification of radioactive materials. In addition, it is used in photon monitoring in X ray machines in industrial and medical applications and also in the monitoring of intensity of photon in accelerator (up to 18 MeV) and around of nuclear power plant. The low cost of silicon PIN photodiode, its abundance, its good position resolution due to its small size and its good sensitivity for different radiation fields, motivate us to develop the electronic circuit associated with this semiconductor detector in order to permit its use in different application area. As a first step through this dissertation, we have focused on the study and characterization of the OPF430 PIN photodiode. A good alpha spectrum was obtained compared to the SSB (Silicon Surface Barrier) detector. We have not obtained a good gamma and X ray spectra due to the detector response limited for low energy (10keV) added to the limited used preamplifier sensitivity. Although, we obtained a good efficiency of gamma ray simulation result using MCNP5 code (through our model construct) which fitted well with experimental data published in different papers