NSF Award
9405098
9405098 Colvard Charge division detectors form am important class of detectors for quantitative imaging of low-intensity electron, ion, or photon beams. A common example is the resistive anode encoder (RAE), commonly used to create composition images in secondary-ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). A significant drawback of present RAD-type detectors is their limited maximun counting rate. This research project proposes to significantly increase the speed of these detectors by using a new electronic pulse processing approach and a novel interconnection scheme to reduce their pulse-counting dead time by a factor of ten. A Phase I study showed that it is possible to integrate the pulses and perform the necessary processing on pulses separated by as little as 30 ns. this Phase II research will study the incorporation of the fast pulse processing design into a functioning RAE detector, including the analysis of pulse propagation and ringing across voltage isolating connections. By pulling everything together, the product of this research will be a functioning prototype ultrafast position sensitive detector that can then be refined and commercialized in Phase III. ***
