A new technique of linseed oil coating in bakelite RPC and the first test results

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel pre-coating technique for bakelite RPCs using linseed oil before assembly, demonstrating initial efficiency and noise rate results with cosmic ray testing, potentially improving detector surface quality and durability.

Contribution

The paper presents a new method of applying linseed oil coating to bakelite plates prior to gas gap assembly, differing from conventional post-assembly coating procedures.

Findings

Achieved effective RPC operation with the new coating technique.

Measured efficiency and noise rate using cosmic rays and Tetrafluoroethane gas.

First test results indicate promising detector performance.

Abstract

Single gap Resistive Plate Chamber (RPC) is one of the very popular gaseous detectors used in high-energy physics experiments nowadays. It is a very fast detector having low cost of fabrication. The RPCs are usually built using glass or bakelite plates having high resistivity $\sim~10^{10}-10^{11}$ $\Omega$~cm. Bakelite RPCs are generally fabricated with a linseed oil coating inside to make the inner electrode surface smoother which helps to reduce the micro discharge probability. Linseed oil coating also reduces the surface UV sensitivity dramatically and effectively protect the bakelite surfaces from the Hydrofluoric Acid (HF), produced by the interaction of fluorine with the water vapour. There is a conventional way to do this linseed oil coating after making the gas gap as done in experiments $e.g.$ ALICE, CMS etc. A new technique is introduced here to do the linseed oil coating on the bakelite plate before making the gas gap. 100\% Tetrafluoroethane (C$_2$H$_2$F$_4$) gas is used to test the RPC module in the avalanche mode with cosmic rays. Conventional NIM electronics is used for this study. The efficiency and noise rate are measured. In this article, the detailed method of fabrication and the first test results are presented.