Post #2594070

Yes. Silicon substrate is too thin to matter. Redirecting with mirrors is probably gonna make it worse. Your housing would need over a cm of solid plastic to block beta radiation. On a dedicated camera you might have a sizeable lens with many lenses totalling a cm of shielding, but redirect the light and place the sensor not behind the lens and you only have that camera housing. Realistically though you have a smartphone, and that β-radiation will probably make it most of the way through the entire thing. And the gamma radiation really won't care, even if you have a 50cm long zoom lens right between the sensor and source. This is where you might want a lead brick wall, 10cm thick should make it short-term safe for ⁶⁰Co. Edit: forgot this was in general, not about the β