Energy sensitive particle detector in energy range of 10 keV

摘要

Energy sensitive particle detectors for low kinetic energy of <10 keV are required to realize high throughput ion scattering spectrometry, charge discriminated mass spectrometry, neutral mass spectrometry without re-ionization, and plasma particle spectroscopy. Superconducting tunnel junction (STJ) detectors are promising for these applications. because STJ detectors can measure kinetic energy less than 10 eV in principle. The performance of an 200 pm-square STJ detector having a layer structure of Nb/Al/AlOx/Al/Nb set at 0.4 K was evaluated by using protons with a kinetic energy range of 1-3 keV. The sensitivity was approximately 2 x 10(2) electrons/eV. The kinetic energy resolution for the 3 keV protons was 132 eV in full width at half maximum with a readout noise of 64 eV, which is far superior compared with conventional particle detectors such as semiconductor detectors and proportional Counters that cannot measure kinetic energies of individual ions in this energy range.