A Novel Nanowire Metal Converter for Improvement the Efficiency of the Gas-filled Radiation Detectors

Abstract

Metal nanowires, due to their special physical properties and also high surface to volume ratio, can have considerable applications in designing and development of novel nano devices. For the radiation shielding, higher absorption coefficient of nano structures in comparison to bulk ones is an advantage. In gas detectors, designing a proper converter with higher efficiency which absorbs higher energy of gamma and X-rays and convert it to free electrons is one of the major requirements. Since the nano wires have higher surface to volume ratio in comparison to the bulk ones, so it is expected that with the same thickness, the generated electrons have higher chance to escape from the surface. In this work, the random Copper nanowires with diameter of 40 nm are deposited on very thin glass slide. This nano structure with thickness of 30 μm is tested with X-rays energy between 12 to 22 keV. The results clearly show that this nano structure for the energy of 20 keV can release electrons three times more than the bulk ones. This novel nanoconverter with higher quantum efficiency can have many applications in high energy physics, medical imaging, and astronomy.