Monte Carlo Calculation of the Energy Response Characteristics of a RadFET Radiation Detector

Abstract

The Metal -Oxide Semiconductor Field-Effect-Transistor (MOSFET, RadFET) is frequently used as a sensor of ionizing radiation in nuclear-medicine, diagnostic-radiology, radiotherapy quality-assurance and in the nuclear and space industries. We focused our investigations on calculating the energy response of a p-type RadFET to low-energy photons in range from 12 keV to 2 MeV and on understanding the influence of uncertainties in the composition and geometry of the device in calculating the energy response function. All results were normalized to unit air kerma incident on the RadFET for incident photon energy of 1.1 MeV. The calculations of the energy response characteristics of a RadFET radiation detector were performed via Monte Carlo simulations using the MCNPX code and for a limited number of incident photon energies the FOTELP code was also used for the sake of comparison. The geometry of the RadFET was modeled as a simple stack of appropriate materials. Our goal was to obtain results with statistical uncertainties better than 1% (fulfilled in MCNPX calculations for all incident energies which resulted in simulations with 1 - 2x10(9) histories.