Welcome to the new version of CaltechAUTHORS. Login is currently restricted to library staff. If you notice any issues, please email coda@library.caltech.edu
Published October 2011 | public
Journal Article

Heavy Ion and Proton Irradiation of Gas Electron Multipliers With Liquid Crystal Polymer Insulator: Evaluation Tests for Use in Space

Abstract

Gas electron multipliers with a liquid crystal polymer insulator (LCP-GEMs) can be employed as X-ray polarimeters in several satellite missions in low-earth orbit. To evaluate their resistance to radiation, LCP-GEMs were exposed to Fe ion and proton beams from the heavy-ion accelerator facility HIMAC, and the gas gain was monitored. The LCP-GEMs survived 14.4-year-equivalent irradiation by fully stripped Fe ions with an energy of 500 MeV nuc^(-1), which simulated galactic cosmic-ray ions. We also studied the degradation of the insulator layer of the LCP-GEMs by irradiation with 160 MeV protons to simulate geomagnetically trapped protons. After irradiation with protons for 31.6 years equivalent, no significant change in gain was observed.

Additional Information

© 2011 IEEE. Manuscript received January 14, 2011; revised May 06, 2011 and June 26, 2011; accepted July 04, 2011. Date of publication August 18, 2011; date of current version October 12, 2011. This work was supported in part by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, a Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (A)(19684008), a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (A)(22244034), and a Grant-in-Aid for JSPS Fellows (22·7385). Part of the experiments in this paper were carried out as a research project with heavy ions at NIRS-HIMAC (19P228).

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 24, 2023