Testing CuO nanowires as a novel X-ray to electron converter for gas-filled radiation detectors

摘要

Nanowires, due to their special physical properties and also high surface to volume ratio, can have considerable applications in designing and development of novel nanodevices. For the radiation shielding, higher absorption coefficient of nanostructures in comparison to bulk ones is an advantage. In gas detectors, designing a proper converter that absorbs higher energy of gamma and X-rays and convert it to more free electrons is one of the major problems. Since the nanowires have higher surface to volume ratio in comparison to the bulk one, so it is expected that by optimizing the thickness, the generated electrons can have higher chance to escape from the surface. In this work, the random CuO nanowires with diameter of 40 nm are deposited on thin glass slide. This nanostructure with different thicknesses are tested by plastic and CsI scintillators by X-ray tube with HVs in the range of 16 to 25 kV. The results show that for the same thickness, the CuO nanowires can release electrons six times more than the bulk ones and for the same energy the optimum QE of nanoconverter can be three times greater than the bulk converter. This novel nanoconverter with higher detection efficiency can have applications in high energy physics, medical imaging and also astronomy.