Development of diamond based radiation detectors for the measurement of alpha activity

Diamond as a material is very interesting due to its remarkable properties such as high bandgap, high electric resistivity, low dielectric constant, high electron and hole mobilities, etc. Because of these properties, diamond exhibits several advantages over other semiconductor detectors in terms of low leakage current, possibility of operation at high temperatures, low noise and fast timing response. Diamond detector can measure several types of radiations encompassing α-particles, electrons, γ-rays, X-rays, neutrons and charged particles. This detector has a great potential to monitor the activity in the nuclear waste solutions due to its chemical inertness and low gamma sensitivity. Diamond is very suitable for this application due to its high corrosion resistance. In the present work, diamond detectors have been fabricated using single crystal diamond (SCD) and polycrystalline chemically vapor deposited diamond (pCVD) substrates. The response of the detectors to alpha particles was studied by obtaining the pulse height spectrum (PHS) of alpha particles emitted from a dual energy alpha source of ²³⁸Pu+²³⁹Pu