First use of single-crystal diamonds as fission-fragment detector

Artikel i vetenskaplig tidskrift, 2015

Single crystal chemical vapor deposited diamond (sCVD) was investigated for its ability to act as Fission fragment detector. In particular we investigated timing and energy resolution for application in a simultaneous time and energy measurement to determine the mass of the detected fission fragment. Previous tests have shown that poly crystalline chemical vapor deposited (pCVD) diamonds provide sufficient timing resolution, but their poor energy resolution did not allow complete separation between very low energy fission fragments, alpha-particles and noise. Our present investigations prove artificial sCVD diamonds to show similar timing resolution as pCVD diamonds close to 100 ps. Improved pulse height resolution allows the unequivocal separation of fission fragments, and the detection efficiency reaches 100%, but remains with about a few percent behind requirements for fragment mass identification. With high-speed digital electronics a timing resolution well below 100 ps is possible. However, the strongly varying quality of the presently available diamond material does not allow application on a sufficiently large scale within reasonable investments.