Abstract This work aims to study the effects of ionizing radiation on a half-wave rectifier circuit. The diodes of the circuit, rectifier and Zener, were exposed to X-rays of 10 keV of effective energy. The characteristic curves of both diodes were evaluated before and after being subjected to cumulative total ionizing dose (TID) effects. The accumulation of charges in the dielectric structures of the diodes alter their individual functionalities, but the changes verified in the rectification were irrelevant. In this study, three irradiation methods were used to correlate the physical mechanisms responsible for the effects caused by radiation with variations in the electrical parameters of the devices and the efficiency of the rectifier circuit.