Saturation of CVD Diamond Detectors

Summary form only given. A saturation study of a CVD diamond detector was performed using a 400 nm laser and a +250 V high voltage supply. The volume of the 5times0.25 mm CVD diamond wafer was fully excited. This study was divided into two experiments. In the first one, saturation versus incident energy was measured. The laser beam energy was increased from a few tenth of a nanojoule to several hundreds microjoules and the signal in the diamond was recorded. In the second experiment, the detector was hit by a saturated first pulse and then by a delayed second pulse of equal or lesser amplitude (delays of 5, 10, and 20 ns). Full saturation of the diamond wafer was found at 250 microjoules. This energy was used to create the first pulse, and the delayed second pulse was clearly saturated. The reasons of this saturation, electronic limitations and/or saturation of the CVD diamond detector will be presented