ELECTROLUMINESCENT GAS DETECTOR OF IONS AND METHOD FOR IDENTIFYING IONS Russian patent published in 2017 - IPC H01J47/02 G01T1/205 

FIELD: physics.

SUBSTANCE: detector is proposed, operating in a vacuum, comprising a body filled with a noble gas (Ar, Kr, Xe, Ne or He) under low (about 0.01-0.5 atm) pressure, an input window for the passage of ions into the detector, a drift volume formed by the cathode of the conductive mesh and the field-forming electrodes, an electroluminescent gap (EL gap) formed by two conductive parallel meshes, photodetectors for the registration of the proportional electroluminescence in the EL gap, according to the invention the photodetector is a multichannel assembly of the Geiger avalanche photodiodes (GAPD) in a matrix, sensitive in the visible and close infrared (IR) spectral area or in the vacuum ultraviolet area (VUV), and the EL gap plane is located perpendicular to the plane of the input window, i.e. along the ion track and with the cross drift of the primary ionization electrons against the track, or parallel to the plane of the input window, i.e. across the ion track and with the longitudinal drift of the primary ionization electrons against the track. The detector can effectively detect specific ions, i.e. work in the ion counting mode with their full stop in the detector, and identify the ions by measuring simultaneously their total energy and the ionization losses (dE/dx) along the track by its segmentation on the measurement sector both with a high spatial resolution along the track (Δx<1 cm) and with a high energy resolution for each of the track segments (σ/E<2%). The inventive combination of features allows to register and identify the ions with energies of about 1 MeV, and with a high spatial (<1 cm) and energy (<2%) resolution, which will increase the ability to identify ions as compared with other ion detectors.

EFFECT: improved performance according to the ion identification degree.

7 cl, 2 dwg