Operation and performance of the Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) mostly depend on the quality and characteristics of the electrode materials. The India-based Neutrino Observatory collaboration has chosen glass RPCs as the active detector elements for its Iron Calorimeter detector and is going to deploy RPCs in an unprecedented scale. Therefore, it is imperative that we study the electrode material aspects in detail. We report here, systematic characterization studies on the glasses from two manufacturers. RPC detectors were built using these glasses and performances of the same were compared with their material properties.

The India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is planning to build a magnetized iron calorimeter detector (ICAL) in which Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) will be the active detector elements. A study of the performance of RPCs, made using electrodes of various thicknesses, is pivotal in optimizing the design parameters of the ICAL RPCs. We fabricated RPCs with glasses of various thicknesses and studied their performance in the same environmental conditions. A study of detector efficiency, noise rate, time resolution and charge distribution is presented in this paper.

A: The India-based Neutrino Observatory (INO) is a project aimed at building a large underground laboratory to explore the Earth's mater effects on the atmospheric neutrinos in multi-GeV range. INO will host a 50 kton magnetized iron calorimeter detector (ICAL) in which Resistive Plate Chambers(RPCs) will be the active detector elements. In ICAL, 28,800 glass RPCs of 2 m × 2 m size will be operated in the avalanche mode. A small variation in the compositions of ionizing gaseous medium in the RPC affects its performance. Study of the charge distribution of the RPC at different gas compositions is necessary to optimize the gas mixture.An RPC made with glass plates of dimension 30 cm × 30 cm was operated in avalanche mode with a gas mixture of C 2 H 2 F 4 /iC 4 H 10 /SF 6 . We have studied the performance of these RPCs at the same ambient conditions. The percentages of the iC 4 H 10 or SF 6 were varied and its effect on the performance of RPC were studied. The study of the charge distribution and time resolution of the RPC signals at different gas compositions is presented in this paper. K: Neutrino detectors; Resistive-plate chambers; Detector design and construction technologies and materials 1Corresponding author.

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