Plasma Panel Sensors as Scintillation Detectors

A new type of highly-pixelated, photon counting radiation detector is described based on the integration of a photocathode into a plasma panel sensor (PPS). This device called a plasma panel photosensor (or PPPS) should be low cost as it can directly leverage off of the fabrication and materials technologies employed in plasma display panels (PDP´s) and photomultiplier tubes (PMT´s). When optically coupled to a scintillator, the device becomes a PPPS-scintillation detector. The PPS, PPPS and PPPS-scintillation detector all hold promise for high sensitivity with gains on the order of 10¹¹, high positional and pixel resolutions approaching 10 mum, and fast picosecond to nanosecond response times. Although the PPPS in some ways resembles a flat-PMT or a micropattern detector, it is not an analog device as it does not operate in the proportional region and in this sense resembles an avalanche photodiode. The PPS and PPPS, as plasma panel devices operating in the Geiger region, are digital detectors with the potential to expand beyond the capability of micropattern detector technology for a host of applications covering ionizing particles and photons, as well as non-ionizing photons. Key applications include medical imaging, homeland security and nuclear physics. Because of its thin form-factor (~1 mm) and highly-pixelated structure, the PPPS-scintillation detector should be capable of both good spectral and high directional/angular resolution.