Investigation Of Basic Characteristics Of Synthetic Diamond Radiation Detectors

Diamonds have attractive properties for use as radiation detectors. Recent advances in diamond fabrication techniques have made it possible to produce almost perfect single crystal materials that have electrical properties suitable for radiation detectors. We developed detectors made of high-purity synthetic IIa diamond grown by the high-pressure, high-temperature method and investigated their basic properties. The leakage current is less than 20 mu A with reverse bias voltages up to 2.4 kV, and the diode current is 0.1 mu A with 1 V forward bias voltage. The energy, resolution for the best detector is 15.4 keV (FWHM) for 5.486 MeV alpha particles from Am-241.