An argon gas proportional scintillation counter with UV avalanche photodiode scintillation readout

Author

Monteiro, C.M.B. ; Lopes, J.A.M. ; Simões, P. C P S ; Dos Santos, J.M.F. ; Conde, C.A.N.

Author_Institution

Dept. de Fisica, Coimbra Univ., Portugal

Volume

1

fYear

2000

fDate

2000

Firstpage

24593

Abstract

An uniform-field, argon-filled gas proportional scintillation counter, using a large area avalanche photodiode is presented. The argon excitation and ionization thresholds were found to be about 0.7 and 3.7 V cm^-1 Torr^-1, respectively. An upper limit of 0.30±0.04 was measured for the argon Fano factor for 5.9-keV X-rays. An energy resolution of 12.5% was achieved for 5.9-keV X-rays. The UV LAAPD proved to be suitable for reading the scintillation light of an argon-filled GPSC, providing a quantum efficiency of about 50% at 128 nm. Good LAAPD performance is already achieved for gains about 100

Keywords

X-ray detection; argon; avalanche photodiodes; gas scintillation detectors; proportional counters; Ar; Ar gas proportional scintillation counter; Fano factor; UV avalanche photodiode scintillation readout; energy resolution; excitation threshold; ionization threshold; quantum efficiency; Argon; Avalanche photodiodes; Electrons; Energy resolution; Ionization; Physics; Scintillation counters; Solid scintillation detectors; X-ray detection; X-ray detectors;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nuclear Science Symposium Conference Record, 2000 IEEE

Conference_Location

Lyon

ISSN

1082-3654

Print_ISBN

0-7803-6503-8

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NSSMIC.2000.949084

Filename

949084