Development and application of chip calorimeter as an X-ray detector

Abstract

Radiotherapy for cancer patients requires accurate measurement of the absorbed dose of radiation in a treatment planning step. Various types of radiation detectors are currently utilized for dose measurement. Among them, calorimeters are known to be the most precise detector for measuring absorbed dose, but their on-site application is limited by the large size of the equipment. We developed a miniaturized chip calorimeter for application as a radiation detector. The calorimetric radiation detector was built using micro/nano fabrication techniques, and consists of an SU-8 photoresist absorber and high-sensitivity vanadium oxide (VOx) thermistors. The thermistors had a temperature resolution of 135 μK, and the calorimeter showed a thermal conductance of 11 μW/K. The detector was irradiated with various X-ray dose rates from a linear accelerator, and the absorbed dose to SU-8 was measured. The detector responses showed high linearity with dose rates, demonstrating the feasibility of the radiation detector for practical uses.