Measurements of the pulse height defect and its mass dependence for heavy-ion silicon detectors

Abstract

The response of different types of gold silicon surface barrier detectors to fission fragments is investigated in terms of the pulse height defect and its dependence upon the energy and mass of the fragments. The experimental results are obtained using a fission fragments time-of-flight spectrometer which is installed within the thermal column of the research reactor HERALD at AWRE Aldermaston. Large values of about 15 MeV for the defect and 0.2–0.5 MeV amu −1 for the mass dependence are observed. A comparison with the results of other workers is given together with an explanation of how nuclear collision losses and charge recombination losses might account for the observed results.