The Charge Collection Properties of CVD Diamond

The charge collection properties of CVD diamond have been investigated with ionising radiation. In this study two CVD diamond samples, prepared with electrical contacts have been used as solid state ionisation chambers. The diamonds have been studied with beta particles and 10 keV photons, providing a homogeneous ionisation density and with protons and alpha particles which are absorbed in a thin surface layer. For the latter case a strong decrease of the signal as function of time is observed, which is attributed to polarisation effects inside the diamond. Spatially resolved measurements with protons show a large variation of the charge collection efficiency, whereas for photons and minimum ionising particles the response is much more uniform and in the order of 18%. These results indicate that the applicability of CVD diamond as a position sensitive particle detector depends on the ionisation type and appears to be promising for homogeneous ionisation densities as provided by relativistic charged particles.Comment: 26 pages (Latex), submitted to NIM

About orientation dependence of physico-chemical properties of HPHT diamond surfaces thermally treated in H2 and D2 environments

Recently [1] we reported on some preliminary results on different physico-chemical properties of diamond (100), (110) and (111) surfaces hydrogenated by using molecular hydrogen only. The main conclusions were that thermal hydrogenation was as efficient as plasma one and that the creation of the conducting surface channel was activated by a larger energy on the (100) surface with respect to the other two. The reason, at least in the case of the comparison between (100) and (111) surfaces, could be either attributed to the presence of a carbon – oxygen double bond before hydrogenation in the former case [2] or to a better coverage by carbon – hydrogen bonds in the latter one. In the present work, further results on surface conductivity after hydrogenation steps carried out at different temperatures are described and discussed, in order to discriminate between purely thermal and kinetic effects. Moreover, other results are reported on diamond powders (0.25 micrometer mean size) in order to draw some qualitative and quantitative conclusions about hydrogen presence and behavior at the diamond surfaces. In order to better clarify the results, a large part of chemical measurements were performed after deuteration steps carried out using the same conditions as thermal hydrogenation

Theoretical study of hydrogen microstructure in models of hydrogenated amorphous silicon

We study the distribution of hydrogen and various hydride configurations in realistic models of a-Si:H for two different concentration generated via experimentally constrained molecular relaxation approach (ECMR) [1]. The microstructure corresponding to low ( 20%) concentration of H atoms are addressed and are compared to the experimental results with particular emphasis on the size of H clusters and local environment of H atoms.The linewidths of the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectrum for the model configurations are calculated in order to compare to the experimental NMR data. Our study shows the presence of isolated hydrogen atoms, small and relatively large clusters with average proton-proton neighbor distance in the clusters around 1.6 to 2.4 Angstrom that have been observed in multiple quantum NMR experiments.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

The (100), (111) and (110) surfaces of diamond: an ab initio B3LYP study

We present an accurate ab initio study of the structure and surface energy of the low-index (100),(111) and (110) diamond faces, by using the hybrid Hartree-Fock/Density Functional B3LYPHamiltonian and a localized all-electron Gaussian-type basis set. A 2D periodic slab model has been adopted, for which convergence on both structural and energetic parameters has been thoroughly investigated. For all the three surfaces, possible relaxations and reconstructions have been considered; a detailed geometrical characterization is provided for the most stable structure of each orientation. Surface energy is discussed for all the investigated faces

Denoising 3D microscopy images of cell nuclei using shape priors on an anisotropic grid

This paper presents a new multiscale method to denoise three-dimensional images of cell nuclei. The speci- ficity of this method is its awareness of the noise distribution and object shapes. It combines a multiscale representation called Isotropic Undecimated Wavelet Transform (IUWT) with a nonlinear transform, a statistical test and a variational method, to retrieve spherical shapes in the image. Beyond extending an existing 2D approach to a 3D problem, our algorithm takes the sampling grid dimensions into account. We compare our method to the two algorithms from which it is derived on a representative image analysis task, and show that it is superior to both of them. It brings a slight improvement in the signal-to-noise ratio and a significant improvement in cell detection

Numerical results

Abstract

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Abstract

Neutron spectrometry at various altitudes in atmosphere by passive detector technique

A new experimental system, constituted by passive detectors, has been developed to measure neutron spectra at various altitudes in the atmosphere. The knowledge of the neutron spectrum is required to evaluate with a good accuracy the neutron contribution to the total dose, due to the cosmic ray exposure, in fact the flux-to-dose conversion factors strongly depend on neutron energy. Moreover, in many dosimetric applications, as the dose evaluation to the aircrew in service on intercontinental flights, the passive system is not only the most convenient but it is often the unique technique. The experimental system is constituted by the passive bubble detector BD100R, polycarbonate foils, polycarbonate bottles, sensitive in low and intermediate neutron energy range, and the bismuth stack, sensitive in the high energy range. Experimental data were obtained in high mountain measurements at Matterhorn (3600 m altitude, 46 N ) and Chacaltaya (5230 m altitude, 16 S), during flights at 12000 m and on board of stratospheric balloons at 38000 m. All the spectra obtained show, as expected, the evaporation peak around 1 MeV and the second direct bump around 100 MeV; the results, different in the neutron flux intensity, confirm the satisfactory sensitivity of this experimental technique

Angle resolved IBIC analysis of 4H-SiC Schottky diodes

We present a new experimental procedure based on the ion beam induced charge collection (IBIC) to characterise semiconductor detectors and devices. It consists in measuring the charge collection efficiency (q) as a function of the angle of incidence (eta) of a strongly penetrating MeV ion beam focussed onto a partially depleted semiconductor detector. The unidimensional model based on the drift-diffusion model derived from the Shockley-Ramo-Gunn's theorem gives the theoretical background to fit the eta(alpha) curve and to estimate both the extension of the depletion layer, the dead layer thickness and the minority carrier diffusion length. To illustrate the analytical capability of this technique, a 2 MeV proton beam was focussed at different incident angles onto a 4H-SiC Schottky diode; the experimental results and the theoretical approach are presented and discussed. (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V