Fast, Large Area Detector for Position and Energy Determination

To study nuclei and nuclear reactions, scientists collide stable and rare isotope ion beams like those generated at the Cyclotron Institute at Texas A&M University into targets of various elements and measure the resulting products of these collisions. The data collected from these nuclear reactions can provide information for several research endeavors, such as nuclear structure, nuclear astrophysics, and nuclear chemistry. The ion beams can also be used to study the effects of radiation on electronics, which is particularly important for testing electronic components and construction materials of space satellites. There are several new facilities for the study of nuclear reactions with ion beams that have either recently been completed or will come online in the coming decade. These facilities include RIKEN (Japan), FAIR at GSI (Germany) and FRIB (USA) among others. The ion beams of these next generation facilities will be at much higher intensities than was previously available. One of the challenges of performing experiments at these new facilities will be how to efficiently gather the needed data while using as much of this higher available beam intensity as possible. Advances in the growth of high quality Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) diamond have created high purity diamond and an opportunity for the application of this material in practical detectors. Diamond is a semiconductor with a large band gap (5.45 eV) which allows production of detectors with very low leakage currents. The high electron and hole mobility in the diamond material provides very fast signal response with very short rise times and total pulse widths. The large lattice displacement energy for atoms and small cross section give diamond excellent radiation tolerance. In Phase 1, we will develop techniques for tiling highly-sensitive single crystal diamond plates into larger area detectors. Flawed regions at the seams will be measured and treated to make them unusable. Contacts for collecting signals from these mosaic diamond detectors will then be applied. Testing at the Texas A&M Cyclotron Institute will provide data on position and energy resolution that will help match detector and contact type for customers’ specific applications.