ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of silicon radiation sensors. Semiconductor has been used as radiation detectors in nuclear physics and X- and γ-ray spectroscopy since the early 1960s. Silicon detectors are most suited to applications that involve charged particles and low-energy X-rays. The operation of a radiation detector obviously depends on the way radiation interacts with the material composing the detector itself. A semiconductor can be described as a solid-state ionization chamber, with an operating principle that is similar to a gaseous detector. Various semiconductor materials, including elemental semiconductors and binary/ternary compounds, are suitable for radiation detector applications. A measurement of the incident radiation energy distribution is required in spectroscopy applications. The energy resolution of a silicon detector depends on two factors: the fluctuation in the number of electron-hole pairs that are generated by incident radiation, and the fluctuation in the amount of charge that is effectively detected by the readout electronics system.
