Imaging of high-Z material for nuclear contraband detection with a minimal prototype of a muon tomography station based on GEM detectors

Muon Tomography based on the measurement of multiple scattering of atmospheric cosmic ray muons in matter is a promising technique for detecting heavily shielded high-Z radioactive materials (U, Pu) in cargo or vehicles. The technique uses the deflection of cosmic ray muons in matter to perform tomographic imaging of high-Z material inside a probed volume. A Muon Tomography Station (MTS) requires position-sensitive detectors with high spatial resolution for optimal tracking of incoming and outgoing cosmic ray muons. Micro Pattern Gaseous Detector (MPGD) technologies such as Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) detectors are excellent candidates for this application. We have built and operated a minimal MTS prototype based on 30 cm×30 cm GEM detectors for probing targets with various Z values inside the MTS volume. We report the first successful detection and imaging of medium-Z and high-Z targets of small volumes (∼0.03 L) using GEM-based Muon Tomography.     

Operation principles and properties of the multi-GEM gaseous photomultiplier with reflective photocathode

Gas Electron Multipliers with a reflective photocathode deposited on the surface of the first multiplying element are very attractive devices for photon detection and imaging over large area at moderate cost. They combine production and operation simplicity, high sensitivity to single photons, fast time response and accurate localization. In this work we present in detail the mechanisms governing the operation of these photon detectors. The results of electron extraction, transfer, multiplication and detection processes in this multi-element structure are presented and analyzed. We discuss the role of important elements and parameters influencing the detector's operation and performance: the GEM geometry, the choice of the different electric fields and the gas mixture.     

Investigation of the performance of an optimised MicroCAT, a GEM and their combination by simulations and current measurements

A Micro compteur à Trous (MicroCAT) structure which is used for avalanche charge multiplication in gas filled radiation detectors has been optimised with respect to maximum electron transparency and minimum ion feedback. We report on the charge transfer behaviour and the achievable gas gain of this device. A three-dimensional electron and ion transfer simulation is compared to results derived from electric current measurements. Similarly, we present studies of the charge transfer behaviour of a Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) by current measurements and simulations. Finally, we investigate the combination of the MicroCAT and the GEM by measurements with respect to the performance at different voltage settings, gas mixtures and gas pressures.     

Study of ion feedback in multi-GEM structures

We study the feedback of positive ions in triple and quadruple Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) detectors. The effects of GEM hole diameter, detector gain, applied voltages, number of GEMs and other parameters on ion feedback are investigated in detail. In particular, it was found that the ion feedback is independent of the gas mixture and the pressure. In the optimized multi-GEM structure, the ion feedback current can be suppressed down to 0.5% of the anode current, at a drift field of 0.1 kV/cm and gain of 10⁴. A simple model of ion feedback in multi-GEM structures is suggested. The results obtained are relevant to the performance of time projection chambers and gas photomultipliers.     

Surface studies of plastic streamer tubes

The structure and chemical composition of plastic streamer tube cathode surfaces were studied. Possible causes for dark currents and continuous discharges observed earlier in these detectors are suggested.     

Charge transfer and charge broadening of GEM structures in high magnetic fields

We report on the measurements of charge transfer in Gas Electron Multipliers (GEM) structures in high magnetic fields. These were performed in the framework of the R&D work for a Time Projection Chamber at a future Linear Collider. A small test chamber has been installed in the aperture of a superconducting magnet with the GEM structures mounted perpendicular to the B-field direction. The charge transfer is derived from the electrical currents monitored during irradiation with an ⁵⁵Fe source. No significant loss of primary ionisation charge is observed, and an improved ion feedback suppression is achieved for high magnetic fields. Additionally, the width of the charge cloud released by individual ⁵⁵Fe photons is measured using a finely segmented strip readout after the triple GEM structure. Charge widths between 0.3 and 0.5 mm RMS are observed, which originate from the charge broadening inside the GEM amplification. This charge broadening is only partly suppressed at high magnetic fields.     

Development of GEM tracking detector for intermediate-energy nuclear experiments

We have developed a tracking detector with a gas electron multiplier (GEM) for nuclear experiments. The developed GEM detector was installed inside the dipole magnet used for transporting the primary beam to the beam dump and it was used to measure the momentum of charged particles. A sufficiently high spatial resolution was achieved at a high counting rate and a magnetic field for coherent pion production with a 392 MeV proton beam to study the short-range component of the residual nuclear interaction. The detector systems and development procedure are described.     

Photoconducting a-Si:H films grown at high deposition rates by pulsing a VHF 100 MHz discharge

In a novel experiment hydrogenated amorphous silicon films were deposited by modulating the very high frequency (VHF) (100 MHz) discharges, at low frequency (2 Hz) with a nonzero low power level, using pure as well as 25% hydrogen and 25% helium diluted silane as the source gases. During these studies deposition rate is found to depend on the dwell time as in the case of RF pulsed plasma CVD reported earlier by the authors. The films were characterised for optical bandgap, dark and photoconductivity, hydrogen content, microstructure factor, Urbach energy and defect density. The results indicate that, unlike the RF pulsed plasma case, there is an order of magnitude improvement in the photoconductivity of the material due to pulsing the VHF discharges. Urbach energy and defect density studies also indicate an improvement in the film quality. The improvements are more pronounced in diluted silane deposited films. Controlled ion bombardment (of high flux and lower energy) and the resulting ion bombardment induced preparation of the growth surface in the VHF discharges are believed to be the main factors contributing to the observed results. Thus, a more favourable sheath characteristics as obtained during pulsed VHF discharge conditions over RF (13.56 MHz). Silane discharges holds the key to obtain high growth rate deposition of a-Si:H films of acceptable opto-electronic quality     

Further studies on the gain properties of a Gas Electron Multiplier with a Micro-Induction Gap Amplifying Structure (GEM-MIGAS) aimed at low-energy X-ray detection

A Gas Electron Multiplier with Micro-Induction Gap Amplifying Structure (GEM-MIGAS) is formed when the induction gap of the GEM is set between 50 and 100 μm using kapton pillars spaced at regular intervals. This configuration combines the properties of a GEM and Micromegas, allowing operation in tandem to generate high charge gains. We measured the essential operational parameters of this system using argon–isobutane (IB) and helium–IB gas mixtures. The present short induction gap GEM was able to achieve effective gains exceeding 2×10⁴ using argon–IB and 10⁵ using helium–IB mixtures. In view of the high gains achieved, particularly when using helium-based gas mixtures, these studies confirmed the possibility of using the present system for high-performance sub-keV X-ray detection.     

Characteristics of stereo images from detectors in focal plane array

The equivalent ray geometry of two horizontally aligned detectors at the focal plane of the main antenna in a millimeter wave imaging system is analyzed to reveal the reason why the images from the detectors are fused as an image with a depth sense. Scanning the main antenna in both horizontal and vertical directions makes each detector perform as a camera, and the two detectors can work like a stereo camera in the millimeter wave range. However, the stereo camera geometry is different from that of the stereo camera used in the visual spectral range because the detectors' viewing directions are diverging to each other and they are a certain distance apart. The depth sense is mainly induced by the distance between detectors. The images obtained from the detectors in the millimeter imaging system are perceived with a good depth sense. The disparities responsible for the depth sense are identified in the images.     

Characterisation of CVD diamond detectors used for fast neutron flux monitoring

Natural diamond detectors (NDD) have been successfully used for fast neutron spectrometry on various fusion installations in plasma diagnostics. These detectors can work at high temperature, are radiation hard and exhibit a high energy resolution. However, the use of NDD is limited by the availability of IIa type diamonds exhibiting high electronic properties. With the recent advance in the growth of high quality chemically vapour deposited (CVD) diamond at LETI, CVD diamond appears to be a very promising material for plasma diagnostics. We present here for the first time results of the use of CVD diamond detectors for fast neutron flux monitoring on a neutron generator. The characteristics of CVD diamond detectors are compared with that of high quality NDD made by TRINITI. Pulse height spectra have been measured with CVD detectors and NDD under both 5.5 MeV alpha particles and 14.1 MeV neutrons. The quality of CVD diamond enables the recording of structured spectra allowing the distinction between the different neutron reactions on carbon. The efficiency of CVD diamond monitors and their actual limitations are analysed and discussed.     

Discharge studies in micromegas detectors in a 150 GeV/c pion beam

A detailed study of several Micromegas detectors prototyped for the COMPASS and CLAS12 experiments is presented. Using a 150 GeV/c pion beam, the discharge probability was measured for several detector variants including bulk and non-bulk Micromegas. A detector equipped with an additional GEM foil as pre-amplification stage was also tested. A resistive coating of the readout strips was found to reduce the amplitude of the discharge by at least two orders of magnitude which was below the detection limit of the experimental setup. The effects of the micro-mesh type and material were investigated as well as the influence of the drift gap. Response in the presence of a 1.5 T transverse magnetic field was also studied. The measurements presented were performed during a RD51 beam test period.     

New formulation of the Green element method to maintain its second-order accuracy in 2D/3D

The Green element method (GEM) is a powerful technique for solving nonlinear boundary value problems. Derived from the boundary element method (BEM), over the meshes of the finite element method (FEM), the GEM combines the second-order accuracy of the BEM with the efficiency and versatility of the FEM.The high accuracy of the GEM, resulting from the direct representation of normal fluxes as unknowns, comes at the price of very large matrices for problems in 2D and 3D domains. The reason for this is a larger number of inter-element boundaries connected to each internal node, yielding the same number of the normal fluxes to be determined. The currently available technique to avoid this problem approximates the normal fluxes by differentiating the potential estimates within each element. Although this approach produces much smaller matrices, the overall accuracy of the GEM is sacrificed.The first of the two techniques proposed in this work redefines the present approach of approximating fluxes by considering more elements sharing each internal node. Numerical tests on the potential field exp(x+y) show an increase in accuracy by two orders of magnitude.The second approach is a reformulation of the standard GEM in terms of the flux vector, replacing its normal component. The original accuracy of the GEM is preserved while the number of unknowns is reduced as many as ten-times in the case of a mesh consisting of tetrahedrons. The additional benefit of this novel technique is the fact that the entire flux field is a mere by-product of the basic procedure for determining the unspecified boundary values.     

The charge collection in single side silicon microstrip detectors

The transient current technique has been used to investigate signal formation in unirradiated silicon microstrip detectors, which are similar in geometry to those developed for the ATLAS experiment at LHC. Nanosecond pulsed infrared and red lasers were used to induce the signals under study. Two peculiarities in the detector performance were observed: an unexpectedly slow rise to the signal induced in a given strip when signals are injected opposite to the strip, and a long duration of the induced signal in comparison with the calculated drift time of charge carriers through the detector thickness—with a significant fraction of the charge being induced after charge carrier arrival. These major effects and details of the detector response for different positions of charge injection are discussed in the context of Ramo's theorem and compared with predictions arising from the more commonly studied phenomenon of signal formation in planar pad detectors.     

The green element method

This paper discusses an element-by-element approach of implementing the Boundary Element Method (BEM) which offers substantial savings in computing resource, enables handling of a wider range of problems including non-linear ones, and at the same time preserves the second-order accuracy associated with the method. Essentially, by this approach, herein called the Green Element Method (GEM), the singular integral theory of BEM is retained except that its implementation is carried out in a fashion similar to that of the Finite Element Method (FEM). Whereas the solution procedure of BEM couples the information of all nodes in the computational domain so that the global coefficient matrix is dense and full and as such difficult to invert, that of GEM, on the other hand, involves only nodes that share common elements so that the global coefficient matrix is sparse and banded and as such easy to invert. Thus, GEM has the advantage of being more computationally efficient than BEM. In addition, GEM makes the singular integral theory more flexible and versatile in the sense that GEM readily accommodates spatial variability of medium and flow parameters (e.g., flow in heterogeneous media), while other known numerical features of BEM—its second-order accuracy and ability to readily handle problems with singularities are retained by GEM. A number of schemes is incorporated into the basic Green element formulation and these schemes are examined with the goal of identifying optimum schemes of the formulation. These schemes include the use of linear and quadratic interpolation functions on triangular and rectangular elements. We found that linear elements offer acceptable accuracy and computational effort. Comparison of the modified fully implicit scheme against the generalized two-level scheme shows that the modified fully implicit scheme with weight of about 1·25 offers a marginally better approximation of the temporal derivative. The Newton–Raphson scheme is easily incoporated into GEM and provides excellent results for the time-dependent non-linear Boussinesq problem. Comparison of GEM with conventional BEM is done on various numerical examples, and it is observed that, for comparable accuracy, GEM uses less computing time. In fact, from the numerical simulations carried out, GEM uses between 15 and 45 per cent of the simulation time of BEM.     

Fast neutron-induced damage in INTEGRAL n-type HPGe detectors

Several INTEGRAL n-type HPGe detectors have been irradiated by fast neutrons and their degradation studied through the analysis of line shapes. The availability of three different fast neutron beams (5, 16 and 6–70 MeV) allowed a quantitative analysis of the importance of the neutron energy on the amount of damage. A comparison is made with the degradation induced by high-energy proton irradiations. Transient effects on the measured resolution are reported after high voltage cut-off on degraded detectors.     

Comparison of three coupled gas chromatographic detectors (MS, MIP-AES, ICP-TOFMS) for organolead speciation analysis

An automatic unit for the screening of rainwater is used for the determination of organolead compounds using different detectors coupled to a gas chromatograph. A systematic overview is given of the advantages and disadvantages of several detectors (electron ionization mass spectrometry, EI-MS; microwave induced plasma atomic emission spectrometry, MIP-AES; and inductively coupled plasma time-of-flight mass spectrometry, ICP-TOFMS, for the speciation of organolead compounds on the basis of sensitivity, selectivity and reliability. C60 fullerene and RP-C18 were used as sorbent materials for these compounds. The primary assets of the fullerene sorbent, as compared to C18 sorbent, are high sensitivity and selectivity resulting from efficient adsorption due to large surface area and interstitial volume. Among the detection systems, GC/ ICP-TOFMS is the most sensitive, with absolute detection limits of approximately 15 fg of organolead compounds (as lead) using 5-mL sample volumes. Except for diethyllead, similar sensitivities were obtained by MIP-AES. GC/MS is intrinsically the most specific option, because the species are detected directly from molecular information. The precision is similar for all detectors. The screening of rainwater from different locations showed that samples collected in countries in which leaded gasolines are now banned contain organolead species at concentrations below 2 pg/ mL, levels that can be detected only for sample volumes of 25 mL and using MIP-AES or ICP-TOFMS as detectors, their determination being impossible by GC/MS.     

Optical/UV and X-Ray Microwave Kinetic Inductance Strip Detectors

Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) are superconducting detectors that sense the change in the surface impedance of a thin superconducting film when Cooper Pairs are broken by using a high quality factor resonant circuit. We are developing strip detectors that have aluminum MKID sensors on both ends of a rectangular tantalum strip. These devices can provide one dimensional spatial imaging with high quantum efficiency, energy resolution, and microsecond time resolution for single photons from the IR to the X-ray. We have demonstrated X-ray strip detectors with an energy resolution of 62 eV at 6 keV, and hope to improve this substantially. We will also report on our progress towards optical arrays for a planned camera for the Palomar 200″ telescope.     

Avalanche effect in Si heavily irradiated detectors: Physical model and perspectives for application

The model explaining an enhanced collected charge in detectors irradiated to 10¹⁵-10¹⁶ n_eq/cm² is developed. This effect was first revealed in heavily irradiated n-on-p detectors operated at high bias voltage ranging from 900 to 1700 V. The model is based on the fundamental effect of carrier avalanche multiplication in the space charge region and in our case is extended with a consideration of p-n junctions with a high concentration of the deep levels. It is shown that the efficient trapping of free carriers from the bulk generation current to the deep levels of radiation induced defects leads to the stabilization of the irradiated detector operation in avalanche multiplication mode due to the reduction of the electric field at the junction. The charge collection efficiency and the detector reverse current dependences on the applied bias have been numerically simulated in this study and they well correlate to the recent experimental results of CERN RD50 collaboration. The developed model of enhanced collected charge predicts a controllable operation of heavily irradiated detectors that is promising for the detector application in the upcoming experiments in a high luminosity collider.     

Solubility measurement,Hansen solubility parameters and solution thermodynamics of gemfibrozil in different pharmaceutically used solvents

Gemfibrozil (GEM) is cholesterol-lowering agent which is being proposed as poorly water soluble drug (PWSD). Temperature based solubility values of GEM are not yet available in literature or any pharmacopoeia/monograph. Hence, the present studies were carried out to determine the solubility of PWSD GEM (as mole fraction) in various pharmaceutically used solvents such as water (H₂O), methanol (MeOH), ethanol (EtOH), isopropanol (IPA), 1-butanol (1-BuOH), 2-butanol (2-BuOH), ethylene glycol (EG), propylene glycol (PG), polyethylene glycol-400 (PEG-400), ethyl acetate (EA), dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and Transcutol^® (THP) at the temperatures ranging from T?=?298.2 K–318.2?K under atmospheric pressure P?=?0.1?MPa. Equilibrium/experimental solubilities of GEM were recorded by applying a saturation shake flask methodology and regressed using ‘van’t Hoff and Apelblat models’. Hansen solubility parameters for GEM and various pharmaceutically used solvents were estimated using HSPiP software. The solid states of GEM (both in pure and equilibrated states) were studied by ‘Differential Scanning Calorimetry’ which confirmed no transformation of GEM after equilibrium. Experimental solubilities of GEM in mole fraction were observed maximum in THP (1.81?×?10^?1) followed by DMSO, PEG-400, EA, 1-BuOH, 2-BuOH, IPA, EtOH, PG, MeOH, EG and H₂O (3.24?×?10^?6) at T?=?318.2 K and similar tendencies were also recorded at T?=?298.2 K, T?=?303.2 K, T?=?308.2 K and T?=?313.2 K. ‘Apparent thermodynamic analysis’ on experimental solubilities furnished ‘endothermic and entropy-driven dissolution’ of GEM in each pharmaceutically used solvent.