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
- Eprint ID
- 27779
- DOI
- 10.1109/TNS.2011.2162001
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20111115-094601518
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- 19684008
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- 22244034
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- 22·7385
- Created
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2011-11-15Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-09Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Space Radiation Laboratory