Development in the design and performance of gas avalanche microdetectors (MSGC, MGC, and MDOT)

Abstract

There has been continuing development of generic classes of microstrip gas chambers (MSGCs), microgap gas chambers (MGCs) and microdot gas chambers (MDOTs) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) over the past few years, to improve such detectors beyond their present capabilities, to produce detectors suitable for use in current or upcoming experiments, and to allow a basis for new R&D developments which may incorporate these detectors as part of the system. All of these new detectors are collectively referred to as {open_quotes}gas avalanche microdetectors{close_quotes}. The MSGC, which was motivated by the pioneering work of A. Oed, has many attractive features, especially excellent spatial resolution ({approximately}30 {mu}m rms at normal incidence) and high rate capability ({approximately}10{sup 6} mm{sup -2}{center_dot}s{sup -1}). Moreover, the MGC seems to have certain advantages over the MSGC in speed, stability and simplicity, and the MDOT has larger gain (>10{sup 4}) and the intrinsic advantages of two-dimensional readout. Because of these attractive properties, they have received a great deal of attention for nuclear and high energy physics experiments, medical X-ray imaging and many other fields requiring radiation detection and measurement.