Position sensitivity in gallium arsenide radiation detectors

For several years, the authors have studied the electrical output of GaAs detectors in response to MeV protons. Beams from the Los Alamos National Laboratory's tandem Van de Graaff, bunched into pulses of about 0.7-ns width, have been used to drive detectors into the current mode, and fast electronics have enabled characterization of the impulse response shapes and the absolute sensitivities. Recently, the authors extended this line of investigation to measure output-charge spectra in response to low-current beams, in which the count rate was low and pulses due to individual ionizing particles were analyzed. The first part of the work was the measurement of spectra of the output charge of the detectors when bombarded by a beam of MeV-energy protons, which was collimated to a diameter of 0.1 mm. The GaAs detector was mounted on a microadjustable stage just behind the collimator, so that the site of irradiation on the detector could be varied. Output pulses originating from the impacts of individual protons were preamplified with charge-sensitive Lecroy 2004 preamplifiers, shaped with Lecroy 2011 amplifiers, and analyzed with a Lecroy 3500 multichannel analyzer. The second part was the measurement of the time response of the detector to a 0.1 mm-collimated bunched proton beam. The proton bunch width was less than 1 ns, during which time many protons struck the detector, driving it into the current mode where individual proton impacts are unresolved. A possible detector design is suggested by the results. In the past, GaAs time response has been improved by doping or radiation damaging, which introduces traps. The tails can be eliminated, but at the cost of a factor of a thousand in main peak sensitivity. It now appears that by masking off the region of the detector near the negative electrode, the tails can be eliminated with only a factor of about ten loss in peak gain