A silicon telescope for applications in nanodosimetry

The position- and energy-sensitive primary particle detectors of a nanodosimetry system are described. They consist of a telescope of silicon strip detectors, which allow the determination of the particle's position from the hit strip address and its energy from the specific energy loss. In our implementation, the energy loss is measured through the time over threshold (TOT). When testing the performance of a single silicon strip detector, it was found that between the energies of 20 and 100 MeV, primary particle energy could be determined to an accuracy of 15%, decreasing to 25% at 250 MeV Below 20 MeV, we observed TOT saturation. It is concluded that the performance of the tested silicon strip detector is suitable for application in nanodosimetry.