Techniques for Measuring Some Characteristics of Ionizing Radiation Beams Using Bipolar Junction Transistor as a Detector

Several electronic components can be used as an ionizing radiation detector either for diagnostic or therapy radiation due to their features. Bipolar junction transistor (BJT) is not a typical device that is used as a detector for measuring some characteristics of radiation for health applications. In fact, BJTs have a loss of sensitivity to ionizing radiation that could compromise to use it as a radiation detector. Actually, there are some parameters and physical quantities either in radiotherapy or diagnostic applications that a BJT can measure besides the apparent trouble from its loss of sensitivity to radiation. The operation principle is based on radiation-induced changes in one of the BJT electrical parameters: collector current or DC gain, for while. The results show that one can correlate the BJT signal with the characteristics of the incident radiation under the device, and similar techniques could be used for radiation measuring in nuclear instrumentation. (authors)