Study of natural diamond detector spectrometric properties under neutron irradiation

Natural diamond detector (NDD) performance was studied up to a neutron fluence of 1015 neutron/cm2. The variations of the NDD spectrometric response to incident α-particles from 241Am source after exposure to fast neutron fluences up to 3×1016 n/cm2 were examined. No significant variations up to the level of 1014 n/cm2 were observed. Degradation of charge collection efficiency at higher fluences is reported. No remarkable increase of the NDD leakage current and count rate change had been observed up to a neutron fluence of 3×1016 n/cm2. The charge collection efficiency variations of neutron irradiated diamond spectrometer were studied ex situ under γ-rays, β-radiation and visible light excitation. Charge collection efficiency restoration up to 75% level and the NDD performance stabilization by extrinsic low-intensity visible light (550 nm<λ<800 nm) or intrinsic excitations have been demonstrated.