Design, fabrication and testing of CVD diamond detectors with high performance

Abstract

A single crystal diamond (SCD) detector and a polycrystalline diamond (PCD) detector have been designed and fabricated using electronic grade CVD diamond. The fabricated detectors were tested for their dark current and X-ray photocurrent. It was found that the SCD and PCD detectors have superb signal to noise ratios (SNR) under X-ray irradiation from an Ag target with 10kV and 40kV accelerating voltage, 2000 and 7000 respectively for the SCD detector and 550 and 2000 for the PCD detector. The performance of these detectors using an 241Am α source was tested under different bias voltages and the results were benchmarked against a commercial SCD detector. The typical rise time of an α event in both of the fabricated detectors are about 1.2ns. The fabricated SCD detector has a 3.7% net energy resolution while that of the commercial detector is about 3.9%. The pulse height spectra are integrated and fitted to obtain the charge collection efficiency. For the fabricated SCD detector, this value is above 97% at bias 200V or beyond, which is 1-2% higher than that of the commercial detector at the same voltage. Finally, the fabricated PCD detector can also detect the presence of α particle although it only has a continuous and decreasing energy spectrum under α radiation. These results fully reveal that the fabricated SCD detector has good performance as a multifunctional detector for both X-ray and α radiation, and show great potential as neutron spectrometer as well.