Thermal drift reduction in photodiode dosimeters with switching bias

•Commercial photodiodes as radiation sensors.•Thermal characterization and thermal model: With reverse bias current the device acts as photodiode, and applying forward bias current and playing as pin diode.•The forward voltage of the pin diode results proportional to silicon die temperature, as it was expected.•Radiation measurements were thermal compensated using the thermal model, and as input the forward voltage of the diode.•The presented thermal compensation method permits to reduce the uncertainty of the radiation measurements using photodiodes due to temperature.