LACE

The project aims to develop a pre-industrial prototype of a coaxial and segmentable p-type hyper-pure germanium (HPGe) gamma detector with n+ thin junctions made by Pulsed laser Melting.

Hyper-pure germanium gamma detectors are the instruments of choice for measuring and tracking gamma rays with the best possible resolution. The detectors currently used are diodes with n-type bulk and have the outer contact collecting holes, and the best energy resolution is obtained from the contact in the core, which integrates the counting rate of all segments. Therefore, the new n-thin outer contacts would allow reaching the maximum counting rate per segment and their resolution would be less susceptible to damage caused in neutron flux applications.

The possibility of producing p-type electrons by collecting electrons in the outer contact goes through the development of a technology that enables the generation of segmentable and heat-stable n+ thin junctions. PLM technology makes it possible to create n+ thin junctions that do not contaminate the hyper-pure Ge and are stable after annealing heat treatments. Other methods such as ion implantation, lithium diffusion, or the deposition of amorphous layers do not meet all the requirements necessary for such production by producing layers that are either poorly doped or too thick and not segmentable or not stable to heat treatments for damage removal.

La tecnologia è anche adatta alla produzione di altri detector anche planari finemente segmentati che potrebbero portare ad ulteriori settori di mercato nell’ambito del gamma imaging in applicazioni medicali e aereospaziali.