Detection of Alpha Particles and Low Energy Gamma Rays by Thermo-Bonded Micromegas in Xenon Gas

In this paper, a time projection chamber (TPC) system for α radiation detection with ultra-low background is presented, which is based on Micromegas, a type of micro-pattern gaseous detector. Based on multi-dimensional information acquired by the TPC, such as the features of particle energy deposition and 3D track, the system can achieve the purpose of α identification with ultra-low background. A prototype TPC with the volume of 15 × 15 × 6.5 cm3 was developed. It was filled with a gas mixture of 95% neon and 5% isobutene at about 1 bar, and no additional shielding or control of alpha-emitting materials was employed. A low-noise high-integration electronic system based on multi-channel waveform sampling techniques was adopted to read out the anode strip signals. A test with a 241Am α source (5.5 MeV), a 49-h background test, and several other tests with weak radioactive samples in the laboratory environment were conducted. A feature selection method was designed to maximize the suppression of background events while retaining the events of interest. Test results showed that within an assumed 5 × 5 cm2 effective area in the center region of the TPC window, the background count rate of this system was lower than 1.6 × 10−3 counts per minute at 95% confidence level, while retaining the acceptance rate of about 96% for 241Am α particles.

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Manufacture and performance of the thermal-bonding Micromegas prototype

Zhang¹,

Wang²,

Yang³

et al. 2014

J. Inst.

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The micro-mesh gaseous structure (Micromegas) has been significantly developed since it was proposed in 1995 at Saclay (France). Some new construction methods different from "bulk" etching technique are under R&D. Here we report the results of several prototypes manufactured with thermal-bonding method, The details of this method and the performances of the chambers are presented. For a 200 × 200 mm 2 prototype, the energy resolution of 16% (FWHM) for 5.9 keV x-rays is achieved at a gain of 2000-4000. In addition, the sparking-resistant chammber with a Gemanium anode is under studying.

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Detection of Alpha Particles and Low Energy Gamma Rays by Thermo-Bonded Micromegas in Xenon Gas

Cited by 4 publications

References 16 publications

A large area, high counting rate micromegas-based neutron detector for BNCT

A large area, high counting rate micromegas-based neutron detector for BNCT

An ultra-low background alpha detection system with a Micromegas-based time projection chamber

Manufacture and performance of the thermal-bonding Micromegas prototype

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