Development of a beta skin dose monitor using a silicon detector

A prototype skin dose monitor has been constructed and tested successfully. The monitor uses an ion-implanted silicon detector available commercially. The detector was selected since it has a lower leakage current than the other type of silicon detectors. It operates on both a pulse mode and current mode, and there is an overlap in the measurable beat dose rate ranges of these two modes. The prototype device includes an 8-b A/D converter and an 8-b microprocessor to display the skin dose directly. The device presently covers more than five orders of magnitude in the measurable beta skin dose rate ranges. The device has been calibrated using an extrapolation chamber and has been used to measure the dose rates produced by several different beta and beta/gamma sources