Study of a silicon microdosimeter for radiation quality assessment in hadron therapy fields

A silicon microdosimeter capable of responding to neutrons and to hadron-therapy beams down to a few keV μm^-1 was developed for assessing the quality of hadron-therapy fields. The sensitive volumes of silicon detectors can be of a micrometric size and so of interest for microdosimetry. Silicon devices can be applied for assessing single event effects in the electronic instrumentation exposed to complex fields around high-energy accelerators or in space missions. When coupled to tissue-equivalent converters, they can be used for measuring either the quality of radiation therapy beams or for dosimetry.