A benign, low Z electron capture agent for negative ion TPCs

Abstract

We have identified nitromethane (CH${}_3$NO${}_2$) as an effective electron capture agent for negative ion TPCs (NITPCs). We present drift velocity and longitudinal diffusion measurements for negative ion gas mixtures using nitromethane as the capture agent. Not only is nitromethane substantially more benign than the only other identified capture agent, CS${}_2$, but its low atomic number will enable the use of the NITPC as a photoelectric X{}-ray polarimeter in the 1{}-10 keV band.

References in corpus (1)

• Direct reading of charge multipliers with a self-triggering CMOS analog chip with 105k pixels at 50 micron pitch

Cited by in corpus (8)

• A review of the discovery reach of directional Dark Matter detection
• Gaseous Dark Matter Detectors
• High Precision Measurements of Carbon Disulfide Negative Ion Mobility and Diffusion
• On the Mechanism of Townsend Avalanche for Negative Molecular Ions
• Towards energy resolution at the statistical limit from a negative ion time projection chamber
• Gas Gain Measurements from a Negative Ion TPC X-ray Polarimeter
• Time projection chambers for gamma-ray astronomy
• Photoelectron track length distributions measured in a negative ion time projection chamber