Polycrystalline CVD diamond-based structures for detection of charged particles

In this work, the radiation detector structures based on polycrystalline diamond film have been studied. Polycrystalline chemical vapor deposited diamond film on silicon substrate has a thickness of about 3 µm. The Ti/Au double layer was used to prepare the circular electrical contacts of 1 mm in diameter on the top of diamond layer. The back side was covered by the full area contact. The current-voltage characteristics of the prepared samples in both directions were measured at room temperature up to 50 V with the flowing current below 0.1 nA. The samples were then connected to the spectrometric chain and used for α-particle detection generated from ²⁴¹Am. The range of α-particles in detector structure is 27 µm. The detectors were operated at zero bias and show a relative energy resolution of 12% for α-particles with energy of 5.5 MeV.