Design of a hybrid gas proportional counter with CdTe guard counters for 14C dating system

Nowadays uniform, low-cost and large-size compound semiconductor detectors are available up to several square centimeters. We are trying to combine this technology with conventional gas detectors to upgrade an anticoincidence type proportional counter, Oeschger-type thin wall counter of 2.2 l, used for a 14C dating facility at the University of Tokyo. In order to increase the ratio of the signal to the background for smaller quantity of samples less than 1 g, an effective approach is to minimize the detector volume at higher gas pressure. However, the anticoincidence function suffers from such a small volume. Therefore we designed a new active wall gas counter of 0.13 l counting volume using CdTe compound semiconductor detectors as the wall of the gas proportional counter to perform anticoincidence. Simulation study showed that at noise thresholds less than 70 keV, the wall counters can reject above 99.8% of events arising from outer gamma rays. Measured noise levels of CdTe detectors were smaller than 24 keV which is low enough for 99.8% anticoincidence efficiency. The experiment showed an anticoincidence efficiency for outer gamma rays from 70% to 80%, similar to that of the old 14C counter. The lost anticoincidence efficiency results from the area of 21.74% which was not covered with CdTe due to two holes for the path of the center anode wire and slots between every two sides of CdTe detectors.