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School of Physical and Chemical Sciences

Studies on diamond radiation sensors

Professor Peter Hobson presented a poster at the Vienna Conference on Instrumentation in February 2019, on work on CVD diamond sensors optimised for high temperature applications.

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Radiation monitoring near nuclear reactors and in deep oil and gas borehole logging requires sensors capable of operating at temperatures in excess of 200 C. Professor Peter Hobson presented a
poster at the Vienna Conference on Instrumentation in February 2019, on work carried out with colleagues at Brunel University London on CVD diamond sensors optimised for high temperature applications.

A number of nominally identical sensors were evaluated and it was demonstrated that alpha particle energy resolutions between 1.6% and 4.0%, with charge collection efficiency exceeding 96%, were obtained up to temperatures of 225 C. A significant degredation in performance at higher tmperatures was attributed to a sharp increase in thermally induced trapping–detrapping. A micropatterned sensor, produced by plasma etching, was modelled using FLUKA to show the potential for enhanced neutron detection efficiency with the surface pits filled with boron-10. Detailed results can be found in a recent Open Access publication in Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A at this DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2019.162486

 

 

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