Gain regulation of the microchannel plate system

Abstract

We demonstrate two two-dimension array of microchannels plates and study the electrical performance of the microchannels plate to further investigate the mechanism of the electron multiplication. • This paper is actually the research on electrical properties of microchannel plate, namely, changes in the relationship between the resistance, gain with work voltage can provide to technical guide for the designers who intend to use microchannel plate as electron multiplier. • The gain of any microchannel plate can determine the application field of MCP electron multipliers. • It is revealed that the system gain rises as the voltage of microchannel plate increases, and can be improved also by varying input current properly. • The output current saturation phenomena of MCP are pointed out in this paper. • We qualitatively explain the physical mechanism of saturation phenomenon. • A possible mechanism of output current saturation phenomenon is the space-charge effect, the channel wall charging and high resistance. The gain of microchannel plate (MCP) is the key index to the signal multiplication property of photomultiplier system. To investigate the signal multiplication mechanism and the electrical property thoroughly, we demonstrated two microchannel plate systems and investigated the cooperative effect from resistance, voltage and gain, which were triggered by ultraviolet signal. Electron amplification is demonstrated and analyzed by current measurement technique. It is revealed that the system gain rises as the voltage of microchannel plate increases, and can be improved also by varying input current properly. And MCP demonstrates gain saturation which depends on the effectiveness of the charge replenishment in the channel walls. These investigations help us understand the gain regulation of the voltage controlled microchannel plate and qualitatively explain the physical mechanism of saturation phenomenon. The results may be important for improving the system resolution of particle detection and image intensifier based on MCP.