Novel Position-Sensitive Particle Tracking Gas Detector
- Integrated Sensors, LLC, Ottawa Hills, OH (United States)
This Final Technical Report has been organized to first provide a short summary of the originally proposed technical goals, objectives and purpose of the Phase-II program. A detailed description of the overall program covering both Phase-I and Phase-II has been provided, which includes: (1) What was Done; (2) Problems Encountered including changes made, added tasks, and what was learned; and (3) Project Impact, including key outcomes and applications. Finally, a list of Inventions, Publications and Presentations has been provided, followed by two Appendices providing first a summary description of medical applications, and second a copy with backup material of our presentation at the 2018 DOE-NP SBIR/STTR Exchange Meeting in Rockville, MD. The overall program goal was development of an ultrathin position-sensitive particle detector, the purpose of which was for tracking highly-ionized heavy particles and rare-isotope beams with high precision for a variety of advanced nuclear physics (NP) applications. The means proposed to achieve this was through the development of a novel gas-filled micropattern particle detector based on our plasma panel sensor (PPS) technology and recently available ultrathin 25μm glass substrates. Additional objectives included demonstration of detector high efficiency at low gas pressure as required in a vacuum accelerator environment, long-term stability with radiation hardness, and large area scale-up capability. The proposed ultrathin-PPS detectors offered a number of important potential advantages including: radiation-hardness, low-noise without cooling, low-mass, large-area at low-cost, high spatial resolution, fast-timing, high-sensitivity and high-efficiency for heavy-ions. A brief summary of the research carried out includes: (1) successful development of a thin-film electrode metallization and electrode patterning process for 25μm thick glass substrates and 8μm mica substrates; (2) successful fabrication of all the components required for the proposed PPS position-sensitive particle tracking gas detector; (3) fabrication of microhexcavity panel structures with pixel pitch resolutions from 0.32mm to 2.5mm; (4) demonstration of a 0.6mm electrode pitch, open-cell PPS panel with a particle beam position resolution of 0.5mm; (5) demonstration that microcavity-PPS panels can operate with ~100% particle detection efficiency for heavy-ions at extremely low internal gas pressures of ≥20-Torr; (6) successful testing of an off-line, high-vacuum test chamber with ultrathin metal foil windows, and isolated from any pumping station, that can be filled with a PPS discharge gas to encapsulate various configurations of ultrathin-PPS detectors for years or decades without having to refill the gas due to slow gas contamination; (7) demonstration that both open-cell and microcavity-PPS panels operating in the Geiger discharge mode are limited to a maximum rate of only a few hundred counts per second per pixel, but the same panels operating in the avalanche mode demonstrated 17,000 counts per pixel without saturation and showed excellent long-term stability; (8) demonstration that both 25μm thick glass substrates and 8μm thick mica substrates cannot be hermetically sealed under vacuum in microcavity-PPS panels with cavity openings of 2mm; however, these ultrathin substrate PPS panels might hermetically seal in higher resolution panels with cavity openings of ≤0.5mm; and (9) demonstration of a new type of position-sensitive particle tracking detector based on a new type of scintillator material that offers superior performance in almost every category when compared to the initially proposed PPS detector. The new scintillator based particle detector can attain ~0.1mm position resolution for any heavy-ion beam at both the lowest and highest beam luminosities planned for at the new DOE Facility for Rare Isotope Beams (FRIB) and possibly at other DOE facilities. We have also demonstrated the potential to achieve ≤100 ps time-of-flight resolution based on cosmic muon results. In terms of commercialization, there are several possible applications for the technology and avalanche mode position-sensitive PPS particle detectors demonstrated in this program. Although the NP market is small, the HEP market for microhexcavity-PPS detectors is likely more significant and might also include both electron and proton medical imaging, as well as particle imaging for homeland security and non-destructive testing. Of greatest interest, however, is the new type of scintillator based detector that we have demonstrated and which has already generated commercial interest at several companies in the particle beam radiation therapy business for the treatment of cancer.
- Research Organization:
- Integrated Sensors, LLC, Toledo, OH (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Nuclear Physics (NP)
- DOE Contract Number:
- SC0013292
- OSTI ID:
- 1561532
- Type / Phase:
- SBIR (Phase II)
- Report Number(s):
- DOE-IS-13292-1; 4195363212
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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