Design of the PIXIE adiabatic demagnetization refrigerators

The Primordial Inflation Explorer (PIXIE) is a proposed mission to densely map the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. It will operate in a scanning mode from a sun-synchronous orbit, using low temperature detectors (at 0.1 K) and located inside a telescope that is cooled to approximately 2.73 K – to match the background temperature. A mechanical cryocooler operating at 4.5 K establishes a low base temperature from which two adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator (ADR) assemblies will cool the telescope and detectors. To achieve continuous scanning capability, the ADRs must operate continuously. Complicating the design are two factors: (1) the need to systematically vary the temperature of various telescope components in order to separate the small polarization signal variations from those that may arise from temperature drifts and changing gradients within the telescope, and (2) the orbital and monthly variations in lunar irradiance into the telescope barrels. These factors require the telescope ADR to reject quasi-continuous heat loads of 2–3 mW, while maintaining a peak heat reject rate of less than 12 mW. The detector heat load at 0.1 K is comparatively small at 1–2 μW. This paper will describe the 3-stage and 2-stage continuous ADRs that will be used to meet the cooling power and temperature stability requirements of the PIXIE detectors and telescope.     

Tritium digital autoradiography with a Medipix2 hybrid silicon pixel detector

We report on the first measurements of ³H beta autoradiography obtained using a room temperature hybrid pixel detector, consisting of the Medipix2 single particle counting read-out chip bump-bonded to a 300 μm thick silicon pixel detector. This system has 256×256 square pixels of 55 μm pitch for a total sensitive area of 14×14 mm². Each pixel contains a double threshold discriminator and a 13-bit counter. Using a detection threshold equivalent to less than 6 keV and a background count rate of 5×10⁻³ counts mm⁻² s⁻¹, with exposures up to several hours, real-time images have been obtained of tritium-labeled solution drops spotted on a thin mylar foil placed in contact with the continuous top electrode of the silicon detector, in open air condition.     

Introduction of high oxygen concentrations into silicon wafers by high-temperature diffusion

The tolerance of silicon detectors to hadron irradiation can be improved by the introduction of a high concentration of oxygen into the starting material. High-resistivity Floating-Zone (FZ) silicon is required for detectors used in particle physics applications. A significantly high oxygen concentration (>10¹⁷ atoms cm⁻³) cannot readily be achieved during the FZ silicon refinement. The diffusion of oxygen at elevated temperatures from a SiO₂ layer grown on both sides of a silicon wafer is a simple and effective technique to achieve high and uniform concentrations of oxygen throughout the bulk of a 300 μm thick silicon wafer.     

Compton imager using room temperature silicon detectors

We have been developing a multi-layer Compton Gamma Ray Imager using position-sensitive, intrinsic silicon detectors. Advantages of this approach include room temperature operation, reduced Doppler broadening, and use of conventional silicon fabrication technologies. We have obtained results on the imaging performance of a multi-layer instrument where each layer consists of a 2×2 array of double-sided strip detectors. Each detector is 63 mm×63 mm×2 mm thick and has 64 strips providing a strip pitch of approximately 0.9 mm. The detectors were fabricated by SINTEF ICT (Oslo Norway) from 100 mm diameter wafers. The use of large arrays of silicon detectors appears especially advantageous for applications that require excellent sensitivity, spectral resolution and imaging such as gamma ray astrophysics, detection of special nuclear materials, and medical imaging. The multiple Compton interactions (three or more) in the low-Z silicon enable the energy and direction of the incident gamma ray to be determined without full deposition of the incident gamma-ray energy in the detector. The performance of large volume instruments for various applications are presented, including an instrument under consideration for NASA's Advanced Compton Telescope (ACT) mission and applications to Homeland Security. Technology developments that could further extend the sensitivity and performance of silicon Compton Imagers are presented, including the use of low-energy (few hundred keV) electron tracking within novel silicon detectors and the potential for a wafer-bonding approach to produce thicker, position-sensitive silicon detectors with an associated reduction of required electronics and instrument cost.     

Gas pixel detectors

With the Gas Pixel Detector (GPD), the class of micro-pattern gas detectors has reached a complete integration between the gas amplification structure and the read-out electronics. To obtain this goal, three generations of application-specific integrated circuit of increased complexity and improved functionality has been designed and fabricated in deep sub-micron CMOS technology. This implementation has allowed manufacturing a monolithic device, which realizes, at the same time, the pixelized charge-collecting electrode and the amplifying, shaping and charge measuring front-end electronics of a GPD. A big step forward in terms of size and performances has been obtained in the last version of the 0.18 μm CMOS analog chip, where over a large active area of 15×15 mm² a very high channel density (470 pixels/mm²) has been reached. On the top metal layer of the chip, 105,600 hexagonal pixels at 50 μm pitch have been patterned. The chip has customable self-trigger capability and includes a signal pre-processing function for the automatic localization of the event coordinates. In this way, by limiting the output signal to only those pixels belonging to the region of interest, it is possible to reduce significantly the read-out time and data volume. In-depth tests performed on a GPD built up by coupling this device to a fine pitch (50 μm) gas electron multiplier are reported. Matching of the gas amplification and read-out pitch has let to obtain optimal results. A possible application of this detector for X-ray polarimetry of astronomical sources is discussed.     

Herschel flight models sorption coolers

The Herschel and Planck satellites will be jointly launched on an ARIANE 5 in 2008. The Herschel payload consists of three instruments built by international scientific consortia, heterodyne instrument for first (HIFI), photo-conductor array camera and spectrometer (PACS) and spectral and photometric imaging receiver (SPIRE). The spacecraft provides the environment for astronomical observations in the infrared and sub-millimeter wavelength range requiring cryogenic temperatures for the cold focal plane units. The spectral and photometric imaging receiver (SPIRE) will cover the 200–670 μm spectral range using bolometric detectors, as the photo-conductor array camera and spectrometer (PACS) will cover the 60–210 μm spectral range. Both instruments SPIRE and PACS feature detectors operating at 300 mK. This cooling will be effected by two helium sorption coolers developed at the Service des Basses Températures of the Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique (CEA-SBT). These coolers based on an evaporative cooling cycle features no moving parts and can be recycled indefinitely pending the availability of a cold heat sink at temperature below 3 K. Several models were developed in the course of the Herschel program and this paper deals with the design, manufacturing and qualification of the flight model coolers.     

Development of an inconel self powered neutron detector for in-core reactor monitoring

The paper describes the development and testing of an Inconel600 (2 mm diameter×21 cm long) self-powered neutron detector for in-core neutron monitoring. The detector has 3.5 mm overall diameter and 22 cm length and is integrally coupled to a 12 m long mineral insulated cable. The performance of the detector was compared with cobalt and platinum detectors of similar dimensions. Gamma sensitivity measurements performed at the ⁶⁰Co irradiation facility in 14 MR/h gamma field showed values of −4.4×10⁻¹⁸ A/R/h/cm (−9.3×10⁻²⁴ A/γ/cm²-s/cm), −5.2×10⁻¹⁸ A/R/h/cm (−1.133×10⁻²³ A/γ/cm²-s/cm) and 34×10⁻¹⁸ A/R/h/cm (7.14×10⁻²³ A/γ/cm²-s/cm) for the Inconel, Co and Pt detectors, respectively. The detectors together with a miniature gamma ion chamber and fission chamber were tested in the in-core Apsara Swimming Pool type reactor. The ion chambers were used to estimate the neutron and gamma fields. With an effective neutron cross-section of 4b, the Inconel detector has a total sensitivity of 6×10⁻²³ A/nv/cm while the corresponding sensitivities for the platinum and cobalt detectors were 1.69×10⁻²² and 2.64×10⁻²² A/nv/cm. The linearity of the detector responses at power levels ranging from 100 to 200 kW was within ±5%. The response of the detectors to reactor scram showed that the prompt response of the Inconel detector was 0.95 while it was 0.7 and 0.95 for the platinum and cobalt self-powered detectors, respectively. The detector was also installed in the horizontal flux unit of 540 MW Pressurised Heavy Water Reactor (PHWR). The neutron flux at the detector location was calculated by Triveni code. The detector response was measured from 0.02% to 0.07% of full power and showed good correlation between power level and detector signals. Long-term tests and the dynamic response of the detector to shut down in PHWR are in progress.     

High-speed low-noise 8 channel BiCMOS preamplifier for silicon drift detector readout

We present the design and the experimental characterization of a novel 8 channel monolithic front-end preamplifier in 0.8 μm BiCMOS technology developed for the readout of high resolution silicon drift detectors having an integrated JFET source-follower stage. The preamplifier chip includes the low-noise current generator required to bias the on-detector JFET. The preamplifier tests showed fast rise-time constant (3 ns), linearity error better than 0.1% and crosstalk between channels less than 0.14% at 100 ns shaping time. The preamplifier has been successfully tested both at room temperature and at low temperature down to −40 °C. The Equivalent Noise Charge contribution of the preamplifier chip at 250 ns shaping time is 3.8 electrons rms at room temperature and 2.8 electrons rms at −40 °C.     

SPICA sub-Kelvin cryogenic chains

SPICA, a Japanese led mission, is part of the JAXA future science program and is planned for launch in 2018. SPICA will perform imaging and spectroscopic observations in the mid- and far-IR waveband, and is developing instrumentation spanning the 5–400 μm range. The SPICA payload features several candidate instruments, some of them requiring temperature down to 50 mK. This is currently the case for SAFARI, a core instrument developed by a European-based consortium, and BLISS proposed by CALTECH/JPL in the US.SPICA’s distinctive feature is to actively cool its telescope to below 6 K. In addition, SPICA is a liquid cryogen free satellite and all the cooling will be provided by radiative cooling (L2 orbit) down to 30 K and by mechanical coolers for lower temperatures. The satellite will launch warm and slowly equilibrate to its operating temperatures once in orbit. This warm launch approach makes it possible to eliminate a large liquid cryogen tank and to use the mass saved to launch a large diameter telescope (3.2 m). This 4 K cooled telescope significantly reduces its own thermal radiation, offering superior sensitivity in the infrared region.The cryogenic system that enables this warm launch/cooled telescope concept is a key issue of the mission. This cryogenic chain features a number of cooling stages comprising passive radiators, Stirling coolers and several Joule Thomson loops, offering cooling powers at typically 20, 4.5, 2.5 and 1.7 K. The SAFARI and BLISS detectors require cooling to temperatures as low as 50 mK. The instrument coolers will be operated from these heat sinks. They are composed of a small demagnetization refrigerator (ADR) pre cooled by either a single or a double sorption cooler, respectively for SAFARI and BLISS. The BLISS cooler maintains continuous cooling at 300 mK and thus suppresses the thermal equilibrium time constant of the large focal plane.These hybrid architectures allow designing low weight coolers able to reach 50 mK. Because the sorption cooler has extremely low mass for a sub-Kelvin cooler, it allows the stringent mass budget to be met. These concepts are discussed in this paper.     

Effect of heat treatment and Fe content on the microstructure and mechanical properties of die-cast Al–Si–Cu alloys

The effect of solution and ageing heat treatment on the microstructure and mechanical properties of the die-cast Al–9 wt.%Si–3.5 wt.%Cu alloys containing 0.1–1.0 wt.% Fe was investigated. The results showed that the dendritic primary α-Al phase was varied from 20 to 100 μm in size and the globular α-Al grains were smaller than 10 μm in size. The Fe-rich intermetallics exhibited coarse compact or star-like shapes with the sizes from 10 to 20 μm and the fine compact particles at an average size of 0.75 μm. The solution treatment of the alloys could be achieved in a short period of time, typically 30 min at 510 °C, which dissolved the Cu-rich intermetallics into the primary α-Al phase and spheroidised the eutectic Si phase. During the subsequent ageing treatment, numerous fine precipitates of θ′ and Q′ phases were formed to provide effective strengthening to the α-Al phase, significantly improving the mechanical properties. Therefore, Fe content in the die-cast Al–Si–Cu alloys needs to be controlled at a low level in order to obtain the improved ductility and strength under solution and aged condition.     

Count rate and dynamic range of an X-ray imaging system with MCP detector

X-ray imaging system with edge-on MCP detector has recently been evaluated for potential application in medical imaging. Although this system has been able to provide good quality images, its clinical implementation is limited by its low count rate. The system count rate was limited by a delay line position encoding electronics, which processes the events serially. The count rate of the MCP was also limited because of high gain required for delay line electronics. In this work, the count rate and dynamic range of the system was evaluated. The count rate limitation due to readout electronics and MCP was measured separately. Pulse counting and charge integrating modes of the MCP detector was used. Photon beams for these measurements were generated using an X-ray tube at 50 and 90 kVp peak potentials with 41 and 75 keV average photon energies, respectively. The electronics dead time was measured to be 20% at 200 kHz total system count rate. In addition, 15–30% of the photon signals were not detected by delay line electronics due to exponential pulse height distribution of the MCP signals. The exponential pulse height distribution of the MCP was due to the edge on illumination mode of the MCP and the high energy X-ray photon beam. Image artifacts due to dead time and signal loss were evaluated. Multichannel ASIC readout electronics was considered as a potential solution to the count rate and dynamic range problem. It was shown that the edge-on MCP detector can operate in pulse counting mode at low gains of 10⁴–10⁵ e/photon required for ASIC electronics. It was also shown that at this low gain, the MCP count rate can be increased up to 1.33×10⁶ count/s/pixel, for 100 μm detector pixels, which is appropriate for clinical X-ray imaging.     

Measurements of photon spectra in mixed fields at a nuclear installation

This paper describes the measurements of photon spectra in mixed neutron/photon radiation fields at a few locations in a nuclear reactor. The measurements were performed inside the containment of reactor 4 at the Swedish reactor site Ringhals, with a Ge-detector (4%). The measurements were carried out as a part of a EURADOS project in co-operation with the Swedish authorities and the reactor operating company. The measurements showed that a large fraction of the photons are high-energy photons (up to 7.6 MeV). This implies that GM-based photon detectors will overread in these fields since this type of detector generally overestimates the ambient dose equivalent in 6–7 MeV photon fields. The measurements also indicated that the photon field was almost isotropic, which in turn implies that the effective dose as well as the personal dose equivalent will be lower than the ambient dose equivalent.     

Growth of SiC particles in reaction sintered SiC

For reaction sintered SiC (RSSC) prepared at 1600°C by conventional melt infiltration technique, experimentation with two different particle sizes of initial SiC, viz., 0.2 and 23.65 μm, showed that the large SiC particles remained unaltered and the sizes of the fine-grained SiC increased several times yielding well-developed faceted crystals in the final material. To study the process further, compacts of SiC powder of particle sizes varying between 0.20 and 8.99 μm were reacted with pure Si at 1600°C and the resulting SiC–Si boundaries were studied by optical microscopy. A distinct boundary layer with no penetration of Si in the compact of SiC of 0.2 μm was observed and the width of the SiC–Si boundary was found to be increasing linearly with time. Detailed SEM examination establishes the growth of the SiC upto around 4 μm from 0.2 μm starting powder. No such growth was observed in the case of starting SiC powder coarser than 0.2 μm. The growth of SiC is explained in terms of solution-reprecipitation mechanism.     

The design of a proton recoil telescope for 14 MeV neutron spectrometry

As part of the design effort for a 14 MeV neutron spectrometer for the Joint European Torus (JET), computer codes were developed to calculate the response of a proton recoil telescope comprising a proton radiator film mounted in front of a proton detector. The codes were used to optimise the geometrical configuration in terms of efficiency and resolution, bearing in mind the constraints imposed by the proposed application as a JET neutron diagnostic for the Deuterium-Tritium phase. A prototype instrument was built according to the optimised design, and tested with monoenergetic 14 MeV neutrons from the Harwell 500 keV Van de Graaff accelerator. The measured energy resolution and absolute efficiency were found to be in acceptable agreement with the calculations. Based on this work, a multi-radiator production version of the spectrometer has now been constructed and successfully deployed at JET.     

Development of mechanical cryocoolers for the Japanese IR space telescope SPICA

The next Japanese infrared space telescope SPICA features a large 3.5-m-diameter primary mirror and an optical bench cooled to 4.5 K with advanced mechanical cryocoolers and effective radiant cooling instead of using a massive and short-lived cryogen system. To obtain a sufficient thermal design margin for the cryogenic system, cryocoolers for 20 K, 4 K, and 1 K have been modified for higher reliability and higher cooling power. The latest results show that all mechanical cryocoolers achieve sufficient cooling capacity for the cooling requirement of the telescope and detectors on the optical bench at the beginning of life. Consequently, the feasibility of the SPICA cryogenic system concept was validated, while attempts to achieve higher reliability, higher cooling capacity and less vibration have continued for stable operations at the end of life.     

High-energy neutron reference fields for the calibration of detectors used in neutron spectrometry

Quasi-monoenergetic reference neutron beams in the energy range between 20 and 100 MeV have been produced and characterized with a proton recoil telescope, a scintillation spectrometer, a ²³⁸U fission chamber and a Bonner sphere spectrometer. The beams are well suited for the calibration of detectors used in neutron spectrometry. A new method is described which reduces the correction for the contribution from low-energy neutrons present in the beams.     

A new method for the measurement of static and dynamic Young’s moduli of long fibres

This article describes a new laser systems to measure the Young’s modulus of a long fibre based on the diffraction of light. Two setups are presented. The first setup has been used to measure the static Young’s modulus of a thin basalt fibre (10 μm diameter, 93 mm length). The second setup called “impulse mechanical spectrometer” was used to measure the dynamic Young’s modulus of a long polyamide fibre (128 μm diameter, 371 mm length). A change of the vibration frequency is achieved by changing the length of the fibre or the load. The damping coefficient was also estimated in the dynamic characterisation. The presented experimental method does not require calibration.     

Factors affecting corrosion behavior of inclusion containing stainless steels: A scanning electrochemical microscopic study

Stainless steels usually contain some amounts of sulfide type of inclusions which are known to affect their corrosion behavior in mild aqueous chloride solutions. The life of the stainless steel components is severely affected as the manganese sulfide inclusions dissolve and the reaction products at the site of inclusions lead to pitting corrosion. The pits so formed as well as manganese sulfide inclusions, being local heterogeneities were studied by a microprobing technique called scanning electrochemical microscopy. In order to demonstrate how this local probing technique can be optimally used to investigate the corrosion behavior of inclusion containing austenitic stainless steels, different experimental parameters were varied one by one. The effect of different factors such as substrate potential, rate of scanning and concentration of chloride was studied in detail. The study shows that a scan rate of 0.32 μm/s (3.2 μm step distance for 10 s hold time) for 50 μm by 50 μm scans and a scan rate of 0.1 μm/s (1 μm step distance for 10 s hold time) for 20 μm by 20 μm scans produced optimum results throughout the study.     

Ultra-low-vibration pulse-tube cryocooler system – cooling capacity and vibration

This report describes the development of low-vibration cooling systems with pulse-tube (PT) cryocoolers. Generally, PT cryocoolers have the advantage of lower vibrations in comparison to those of GM cryocoolers. However, cooling systems for the cryogenic laser interferometer observatory (CLIO), which is a gravitational wave detector, require an operational vibration that is sufficiently lower than that of a commercial PT cryocooler. The required specification for the vibration amplitude in cold stages is less than ±1 μm. Therefore, during the development of low-vibration cooling systems for the CLIO, we introduced advanced countermeasures for commercial PT cryocoolers. The cooling performance and the vibration amplitude were evaluated. The results revealed that 4 K and 80 K PT cooling systems with a vibration amplitude of less than ±1 μm and cooling performance of 4.5 K and 70 K at heat loads of 0.5 W and 50 W, respectively, were developed successfully.     

Influence of evolving microstructure on magnetic-hysteresis characteristics in polycrystalline nickel–zinc ferrite,Ni0.3Zn0.7Fe2O4

We report some research findings on the parallel evolutions of microstructural properties and magnetic hysteresis-loop properties; we attempt to elucidate their relationships. The Ni_0.3Zn_0.7Fe₂O₄ toroidal samples were prepared via high-energy ball milling and subsequent moulding; the samples with nanometer/submicron sized compacted powder were sintered from 600 °C to 1400 °C using 100 °C increments. An integrated analysis of phase, microstructural and hysteresis data would point to the existence of three distinct shape-differentiated groups of B–H hysteresis loops which belong to samples with weak, moderate and strong magnetism. The observed grain size with respect to the magnetic-hysteresis behaviour varied from 0.19 μm to 0.23 μm, 0.24 μm to 0.43 μm and 1.07 μm to 4.98 μm for weak, moderate and strong ferromagnetic behaviour respectively. The first occurrence of a strikingly erect and well-defined sigmoid-shape was observable only when sufficient single-phase purity and crystallinity and a sufficiently high volume fraction of multi-domain grains (>0.25 μm) were attained.