Development of Sensors for Ultraviolet Radiation Monitoring

Stratospheric ozone is known to be the most important atmospheric factor determining clear sky UV radiation reaching the Earth's surface. There are, however, other effects that influence the UV radiant energy transfer: cloud cover, aerosols, tropospheric ozone, and other gaseous pollutants. The relationships between various phenomena taking place in the atmosphere are complex and not well known. Therefore, ground based UV measurements are necessary to explore atmospheric changes and resultant effects on the biosphere and on the life. Moreover in this century the human will travel in space and in such environments the UV effects on health and on materials are not yet completely understood. An instrument that can measure one or several effective irradiation from ultraviolet solar emission must have an increasing sensitivity with decreasing wavelength and should be temperature stabilized and long term reproducible, moreover the response of the sensor should be in agreement with the cosine law. These are only some important condition for the design of a good sensor, but how to obtain a particular spectral response that can reconstruct a biological effectiveness? This work regards the development of innovative sensors for biological effective UV measurements and their possible applications in research field on earth and in space environments.