Abstract:
Diamond has been known for many years as a very attractive material for applications in the detection field and more specifically for the radiation therapy dosimetry. The nature of the material, the wide band gap and the tissue-equivalence avoid the correction factors for pressure, temperature and energy concerning the estimation of the dose. This research work is primarily aimed at exploring the Optical characterisation of synthetic diamond using Photolithography-photoluminescence and pulsed laser scanning on the substrate developed thin film chemical vapour deposition (CVD). The important issue concerning diamond as a detector is that one must overcome the problem of the inevitably low signal due to the large band-gap. Hence electrical measurements such as current, capacitance and photo-induced transient current spectroscopy (PICTS) will be determined. Diamond must be considered as a package, one with exceptional mechanical, chemical radiological robustness in which the need for cooling is reduced or removed, in which there is reasonable hope that detectors could be in place long enough for accurate positional surveys to be made, and to be close. Synthetic diamond is a new detector material that is of particular interest for medical X-ray imaging and gamma cameras. A range of fundamental semiconductor physics techniques were used to explore charge transport, impurities and trapping, and material uniformity in thick-film synthetic diamond. Due to the low atomic number, it is relatively insensitive to gamma radiation and has thus a good sensitivity to particle radiation in gamma backgrounds, which is often advantageous in neutron detection scenarios. Radioisotope characterisation was done using a range of isotopes and X-ray sources simulations.
