Plasma effect in Silicon Charge Coupled Devices (CCDs)

TL;DR

This paper investigates the plasma effect in silicon CCDs caused by alpha particles across a range of energies, demonstrating potential for high-resolution neutron imaging applications.

Contribution

It extends previous measurements of plasma effects in CCDs to lower alpha energies using neutron-induced reactions, providing new insights into charge cluster sizes and charge density.

Findings

Charge cluster sizes agree with previous high-energy measurements.

Effective linear charge density varies with alpha particle energy.

Potential for high-resolution neutron imaging using CCDs.

Abstract

Plasma effect is observed in CCDs exposed to heavy ionizing alpha-particles with energies in the range 0.5 - 5.5 MeV. The results obtained for the size of the charge clusters reconstructed on the CCD pixels agrees with previous measurements in the high energy region (>3.5 MeV). The measurements were extended to lower energies using alpha-particles produced by (n,alpha) reactions of neutrons in a Boron-10 target. The effective linear charge density for the plasma column is measured as a function of energy. The results demonstrate the potential for high position resolution in the reconstruction of alpha particles, which opens an interesting possibility for using these detectors in neutron imaging applications.