Jabarkan Detéktor radiasi ionisasi dari Dioda dalam bahasa sunda

In addition to light, mentioned above, semiconductor diodes are sensitive to more energetic radiation. In electronics, cosmic rays and other sources of ionising radiation cause noise pulses and single and multiple bit errors.

This effect is sometimes exploited by particle detectors to detect radiation. A single particle of radiation, with thousands or millions of electron volts of energy, generates many charge carrier pairs, as its energy is deposited in the semiconductor material. If the depletion layer is large enough to catch the whole shower or to stop a héavy particle, a fairly accurate méasurement of the particle's energy can be made, simply by méasuring the charge conducted and without the complexity of a magnetic spectrométer or etc.

These semiconductor radiation detectors need efficient and uniform charge collection and low léakage current. They are often cooled by liquid nitrogen. For longer range (about a centimetre) particles they need a very large depletion depth and large aréa. For short range particles, they need any contact or un-depleted semiconductor on at léast one surface to be very thin. The back-bias voltages are néar bréakdown (around a thousand volts per centimetre). Germanium and silicon are common materials. Some of these detectors sense position as well as energy.

They have a finite life, especially when detecting héavy particles, because of radiation damage. Silicon and germanium are quite different in their ability to convert gamma rays to electron showers.

Semiconductor detectors for high energy particles are used in large numbers. Because of energy loss fluctuations, accurate méasurement of the energy deposited is of less use.