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This article provides a review of semiconductor based ionising radiation sensors to measure accumulated dose and detect individual strikes of ionising particles. The measurement of ionising radiation (γ-ray, X-ray, high energy UV-ray and heavy ions, etc.) is essential in several critical reliability applications such as medical, aviation, space missions and high energy physics experiments considering safety and quality assurance. In the last few decades, numerous techniques based on semiconductor devices such as diodes, metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs) and solid-state photomultipliers (SSPMs), etc., have been reported to estimate the absorbed dose of radiation with sensitivity varying by several orders of magnitude from μGy to MGy. In addition, the mitigation of soft errors in integrated circuits essentially requires detection of charged particle induced transients and digital bit-flips in storage elements. Depending on the particle energies, flux and the application requirements, several sensing solutions such as diodes, static random access memory (SRAM) and NAND flash, etc., are reported in the literature. This article goes through the evolution of radiation dosimeters and particle detectors implemented using semiconductor technologies and summarises the features with emphasis on their underlying principles and applications. In addition, this article performs a comparison of the different methodologies while mentioning their advantages and limitations.

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This paper presents a novel radiation monitor which is based on a custom SRAM (Static Random Access Memory) ASIC. Its sensitivity is adjustable through its core supply voltage and the radiation monitoring is based on the upset rate that is measured during a measurement-interval in the memory. The sensor has different supply voltages for the SRAM core and the interface logic to prevent incorrect digital signals during the measurement cycle. The memory was processed in a 0.18 µm CMOS technology and was tested with heavy ions with an LET from 1.8-60 MeV.cm 2 /mg, 24 GeV protons and a mixed radiation field. The memory cells were also verified with a Two-Photon Absorption (TPA) Laser. Furthermore, an analysis was made on Single-Event Upsets and multi-bit upsets.

This paper presents the circuits and heavy-ion irradiation test results of a Single-Event Transient (SET) measurement chip in a 65 nm CMOS technology. The measurements contain two parts: total SET ionization charge and SET pulse duration. Transistors with different types and dimensions were implemented as victim devices to evaluate how transistor parameters impact the SET effects. Additionally, SET variation from different supply voltages was also investigated. The test chip has been tested under a heavy-ion beam with an effective LET (Linear Energy Transfer) from 20.4 to 88.35 MeV•cm 2 /mg using a 0 o to 45 o incidence angle.