A FEASIBILITY STUDY OF A P-TYPE SILICON DRIFT DETECTOR FOR HIGH PRECISION RADIATION MEASUREMENTS

NUCLEAR PHYSICS EXPERIMENTS NEED HIGH ENERGY RESOLUTION POSITION SENSITIVE PARTICLE DETECTORS. THE PLANNED EXPERIMENTS AT THE RELATIVISTIC HEAVY ION COLLIDER ALSO REQUIRE TRACKING CHARGED PARTICLES IN A VERY HIGH MULTIPLICITY ENVIRONMENT. NEW STATE-OF-THE-ART POSITION SENSITIVE DETECTORS ARE NEEDED. THIS PHASE I PROJECT WILL STUDY THE FEASIBILITY OF A HIGH PRECISION, LOW COST, POSITION SENSITIVE CHARGED PARTICLE TRACKER, A P-TYPE SILICON DRIFT DETECTOR (SDD). PROTOTYPE VERSIONS OF N-TYPE SILICON DRIFT DETECTORS HAVE BEEN SUCCESSFULLY IMPLEMENTED IN HEAVY-ION AND HIGH ENERGY PHYSICS EXPERIMENTS WHERE THEY HAVE DEMONSTRATED HIGH SPATIAL PRECISION AND DURABILITY. HOWEVER, BECAUSE OF THE DIFFICULTY OF OBTAINING QUALITY HIGH RESISTIVITY N-TYPE SILICON THESE DETECTORS HAVE NOT YET BEEN WIDELY USED. HIGH RESISTIVITY P-TYPE SILICON IS READILY AVAILABLE AND ALSO OFFERS ADVANTAGES. THIS PHASE I PROJECT WILL FOCUS OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF LARGE AREA (>16 CM(2)) P-TYPE SILICON DRIFT DETECTORS. EXPERIMENTS AND SIMULATIONS WILL BE CONDUCTED TO STUDY THE POSITION AND ENERGY RESOLUTION, RADIATION RESISTANCE, TEMPERATURE GRADIENT EFFECTS, AND OPTIMIZATION OF THE INTEGRATED CALIBRATION SYSTEM. PHASE II WILL EXTEND THE DEVELOPMENT OF LARGE P-TYPE SDD TO INCLUDE THE PRODUCTION AND TESTING OF CHARGED TRACKING AND X-RAY SDDS, AND THE DEVICES WILL BE DEVELOPED FOR THE MANUFACTURE OF COMMERCIAL DETECTORS FOR INDUSTRIAL AND SCIENTIFIC APPLICATIONS.