Plasma Panel Sensors for Particle and Beam Detection

TL;DR

The paper introduces Plasma Panel Sensors (PPS), a novel digital gas detector inspired by plasma display panels, demonstrating high spatial resolution and fast response times for particle detection.

Contribution

This work develops PPS technology with low-mass, small-thickness design, and reports initial detection results for various particles, including betas, muons, and protons.

Findings

Spatial resolution of about 1 mm

Response times of several nanoseconds

Successful detection of betas, muons, and protons

Abstract

The plasma panel sensor (PPS) is an inherently digital, high gain, novel variant of micropattern gas detectors inspired by many operational and fabrication principles common to plasma display panels (PDPs). The PPS is comprised of a dense array of small, plasma discharge, gas cells within a hermetically-sealed glass panel, and is assembled from non-reactive, intrinsically radiation-hard materials such as glass substrates, metal electrodes and mostly inert gas mixtures. We are developing the technology to fabricate these devices with very low mass and small thickness, using gas gaps of at least a few hundred micrometers. Our tests with these devices demonstrate a spatial resolution of about 1 mm. We intend to make PPS devices with much smaller cells and the potential for much finer position resolutions. Our PPS tests also show response times of several nanoseconds. We report here our results in detecting betas, cosmic-ray muons, and our first proton beam tests.