The Photon-Assisted Cascaded Electron Multiplier: a Concept for Potential Avalanche-Ion Blocking

Abstract

We present a Photon-Assisted Cascaded Electron Multipliers (PACEM) which has a potential for ion back-flow blocking in gaseous radiation detectors: the avalanche from a first multiplication stage propagates to the successive one via its photons, which in turn induce photoelectron emission from a photocathode deposited on the second multiplier stage; the multiplication process may further continue via electron-avalanche propagation. The photon-mediated stage allows, by a proper choice of geometry and fields, complete blocking of the ion back-flow into the first element; thus, only ions from the latter will flow back to the drift region. The PACEM concept was validated in a double-MHSP (Micro-Hole & Strip Plate) cascaded multiplier operated in xenon, where the intermediate scintillation stage provided optical gain of ~60. The double-MHSP detector had a total gain above 10^4 and energy resolution of 18% FWHM for 5.9 keV x-rays.

13 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to JINST - electronic Journal of Instrumentation, June 25, 2006

References in corpus (7)

• A Hadron Blind Detector for the PHENIX Experiment at RHIC
• Study of ion feedback in multi-GEM structures
• Two-phase argon and xenon avalanche detectors based on Gas Electron Multipliers
• Ion backflow in the Micromegas TPC for the future linear collider
• Ion-induced effects in GEM & GEM/MHSP gaseous photomultipliers for the UV and the visible spectral range
• Advances in ion back-flow reduction in cascaded gaseous electron multipliers incorporating R-MHSP elements
• MHSP in reversed-biased operation mode for ion blocking in gas-avalanche multipliers

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Advances in Gaseous Photomultipliers
• Further progress in ion back-flow reduction with patterned gaseous hole-multipliers
• Liquid Hole-Multipliers: A potential concept for large single-phase noble-liquid TPCs of rare events
• First observation of liquid-xenon proportional electroluminescence in THGEM holes
• Electric and Photoelectric Gates for ion backflow suppression in multi-GEM structures
• High pressure operation of the Photon-Assisted Cascaded Electron Multiplier