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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 433 records · Page 24
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2020

Development of Transition-Edge Sensor X-ray Microcalorimeter Linear Array for Compton Scattering and Energy Dispersive Diffraction Imaging

In this paper we present a strip transition-edge sensor microcalorimeter linear array detector developed for energy dispersive X-ray diffraction imaging and Compton scattering applications. The prototype detector is an array of 20 transition-edge sensors with absorbers in strip geometry arranged in a linear array. We discuss the fabrication steps needed to develop this array including Mo/Cu bilayer, Au electroplating, and proofof-principle fabrication of long strips of SiNx membranes. We demonstrate minimal unwanted effect of strip geometry on X-ray pulse response and showlinear relationship of 1/pulse height and pulse decay times with absorber length. For the absorber lengths studied, our preliminary measurements show energy resolutions of 40-180eV near 17 keV. Furthermore, we show that the heat flow to the cold bath is nearly independent of the absorber area and depends on the SiNx membrane geometry.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Development of an Electrochemical Hydrogen Contaminant Detector

Hydrogen refueling stations (HRSs) that dispense hydrogen to fuel cell vehicles need to ensure the quality of hydrogen to avoid contamination of the vehicle’s expensive fuel cell stacks. Currently, stations verify their fuel quality only periodically to ensure that they meet the strict fuel quality standards specified by either International Organization for Standards (ISO) or Society for Automotive Engineers (SAE). The development of hydrogen contaminant detectors (HCDs) that can provide low cost continuous monitoring at the HRS can be an invaluable asset in protecting fuel cell vehicles from any fuel contamination in-between infrequent expensive analysis of hydrogen fuel quality. An HCD capable of detecting < 200 ppb of CO in hydrogen is presented in this paper. The HCD is based on an electrochemical hydrogen pumping cell whose ultra-low loaded working electrode is poisoned by the contaminant, thus reducing its hydrogen oxidation reaction rate. The hydrogen pumping cell consists of a Nafion® membrane, a sputtered Pt working electrode, a Pt/Ru counter/pseudo-reference electrode and an internal water wicking system that provides humidification to the membrane and electrodes. When this HCD is operated in a pulsed voltammetry mode, it can provide stable CO response for thousands of hours in a HRS.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2026

Operationally induced preferred basis in unitary quantum mechanics

The preferred-basis problem and the definite-outcome aspect of the measurement problem persist even if the detector is modeled unitarily, because experimental data are necessarily represented in a Boolean event algebra of mutually exclusive records whereas the theoretical description is naturally formulated in a noncommutative operator algebra with continuous unitary symmetry. This change of mathematical type constitutes the core of the 'cut': a structurally necessary interface from group-based kinematics to set-based counting. In the presented view the basis relevant for recorded outcomes is not determined by the system Hamiltonian alone; it is induced by the measurement mapping, i.e., by the detector channel together with the coarse-grained readout that defines an instrument. The probabilistic mapping is anchored in symmetry and measure theory: by Gleason-type uniqueness (Gleason for projections in $d>2$ and Busch's extension for Positive Operator-Valued Measures (POVMs) including $d=2$), the trace rule is the unique probability measure consistent with additivity over exclusive events and basis-independence of the unitary sector. A compact qubit--pointer model yields an induced unsharp POVM $E_\pm=\tfrac12(\id\pm η\,σ_z)$ with $η$ fixed by pointer resolution, displaying explicitly how the detector induces the relevant basis. Finally, nested-observer paradoxes are tightened into a non-composability lemma: joint assignment of outcome propositions is obstructed unless a joint instrument exists. This relocates the origin of randomness to the stochasticity of the transition rules.

Pronskikh, Vitaly [Fermilab] (ORCID:00000002518174↗
DOE OSTI2020

Experimental Study of Acceptor Removal in UFSD

The performance of the Ultra-Fast Silicon Detectors (UFSD) after irradiation with neutrons and protons is compromised by the removal of acceptors in the thin layer below the junction responsible for the gain. In this study, the effect is tested both with capacitance–voltage, C–V, measurements of the doping concentration and with measurements of charge collection, CC, using charged particles. We find a perfect linear correlation between the bias voltage to deplete the gain layer determined with C–V and the bias voltage to collect a defined charge, measured with charge collection. An example for the usefulness of this correlation is presented.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Characterization of EJ-270 and Ce-doped LiCAF scintillators for the development of high-rate neutron reflectometer detectors

The Second Target Station of the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory is anticipated to provide a neutron source with ∼20 times increase in peak brightness than the First Target Station. The neutron reflectometers currently in operation at the First Target Station need to be upgraded due to the increased neutron flux. A prototype neutron detector module based upon a pixelated scintillator array readout by silicon photomultipliers is being developed to address the high-rate challenge faced with future neutron reflectometer instruments at the Second Target Station. Two types of scintillator materials were considered for this detector development, i.e., 6 Li-loaded EJ-270 plastic scintillator and Ce-doped LiCAF single crystal. This paper reports the scintillator characterization results, including light yield, pulse shape discrimination performance, capability to detect thermal neutrons in a high γ-ray field, and γ-ray sensitivity. The number of photons produced per neutron capture by EJ-270 and LiCAF:Ce was measured to be 2176 ± 91 and 2651 ± 108, respectively. EJ-270 demonstrated a good capability to discriminate between neutrons and γ-rays by employing the commonly used charge comparison method (figure-of-merit: 1.13 ± 0.01 for an energy cut of 292–426 keVee) and a reasonable performance when using the time-over-threshold techniques; however, no discrimination was observed from LiCAF:Ce regardless of the pulse shape discrimination approaches utilized, making pulse height discrimination necessary for LiCAF:Ce to differentiate between neutrons and γ-rays. Both EJ-270 and LiCAF:Ce exhibited an acceptable capacity to detect thermal neutrons at high exposure rates up to approximately 584 mR/h. Furthermore, the γ-ray sensitivities measured with a 60 Co source at an exposure rate of around 1145 mR/h were determined to be (6.11 ± 0.87) × 10 −6 and (7.64 ± 1.08) × 10 −7 for EJ-270 and LiCAF:Ce, respectively.

EJ-270↗
DOE OSTI2022

Four-year Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) Observations: On-sky Receiver Performance at 40, 90, 150, and 220 GHz Frequency Bands

The Cosmology Large Angular Scale Surveyor (CLASS) observes the polarized cosmic microwave background (CMB) over the angular scales of 1° ≲ θ ≤ 90° with the aim of characterizing primordial gravitational waves and cosmic reionization. We report on the on-sky performance of the CLASS Q-band (40 GHz), W-band (90 GHz), and dichroic G-band (150/220 GHz) receivers that have been operational at the CLASS site in the Atacama desert since 2016 June, 2018 May, and 2019 September, respectively. We show that the noise-equivalent power measured by the detectors matches the expected noise model based on on-sky optical loading and lab-measured detector parameters. Using Moon, Venus, and Jupiter observations, we obtain power to antenna temperature calibrations and optical efficiencies for the telescopes. From the CMB survey data, we compute instantaneous array noise-equivalent-temperature sensitivities of 22, 19, 23, and 71 $\mu {{\rm{K}}}_{\mathrm{cmb}}\sqrt{{\rm{s}}}$ for the 40, 90, 150, and 220 GHz frequency bands, respectively. These noise temperatures refer to white noise amplitudes, which contribute to sky maps at all angular scales. Future papers will assess additional noise sources impacting larger angular scales.

Observational cosmology↗
DOE OSTI2024

Characterizing novel Indium Phosphide pad detectors with focused X-ray beams and laboratory tests

Future tracking systems in High Energy Physics experiments will require large instrumented areas with low radiation length. Crystalline silicon sensors have been used in tracking systems for decades, but are difficult to manufacture and costly to produce for large areas. We are exploring alternative sensor materials that are amenable to fast fabrication techniques used for thin film devices. Indium Phosphide pad sensors were fabricated at Argonne National Lab using commercially available InP:Fe 2-inch mono-crystal substrates. Current-voltage and capacitance-voltage characterizations were performed to study the basic operating characteristics of a group of sensors. Micro-focused X-ray beams at Canadian Light Source and Diamond Light Source were used to study the response to ionizing radiation, and characterize the uniformity of the response for several devices. Electrical test results showed a high degree of performance uniformity between the 48 tested devices. X-ray test beam results showed good performance uniformity within tested devices after accounting for spatially-local defects and edge fields. As a result, this motivates further studies into thin film devices for future tracking detectors.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Characterization of a gigabit transceiver for the ATLAS inner tracker pixel detector readout upgrade

We present a gigabit transceiver prototype Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), GBCR, for the ATLAS Inner Tracker (ITk) Pixel detector readout upgrade. GBCR is designed in a 65-nm CMOS technology and consists of four upstream receiver channels, a downstream transmitter channel, and an Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) slave. The upstream channels receive the data at 5.12 Gbps passing through 5-meter 34-American Wire Gauge (AWG) Twin-axial (Twinax) cables, equalize and retime them with a recovered clock, and then drive an optical transmitter. The downstream channel receives the data at 2.56 Gbps from an optical receiver and drives the cable as same as the upstream channels. The jitter of the upstream channel output is measured to be 35 ps (peak-peak) when the Clock-Data Recovery (CDR) module is turned on and the jitter of the downstream channel output after the cable is 138 ps (peak-peak). The power consumption of each upstream channel is 72 mW when the CDR module is turned on and the downstream channel consumes 27 mW. GBCR survives the total ionizing dose of 200 kGy.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2024

Simulating gas-filled neutron detector responses with DRiFT

– Gas-filled neutron detectors have numerous applications across the nuclear engineering and nuclear physics fields. The ability to accurately model and simulate these detectors is important for those applications but is currently limited by the lack of readily-useable detector response software. Recently, the capabilities of DRiFT, a Detector Response Function Toolkit, were expanded to model gas-filled, He-3 and BF3, neutron detectors so that, combined with the radiation transport capabilities of the MCNP code, a high-fidelity treatment of gas-filled neutron detectors can be obtained. Further, this model has been validated by an experiment carried out with the Epithermal Neutron Multiplicity Counter and its capabilities have been demonstrated in two additional experiments. This work shows that utilizing DRiFT to post-process MCNP outputs produces more accurate results than using the MCNP code alone, reducing the difference between experimental and simulated results for measurements taken near the end of a He-3 tube, where the MCNP code struggles to model inactive regions of the detector, from a maximum of 35% with the MCNP code alone to 15% with the MCNP code plus DRiFT. DRiFT's diagnostic capabilities are also demonstrated with measurements for scenarios when pulse pileup or room return effects are significant and must be considered. Altogether, these measurements underpin the ability of DRiFT to accurately model and predict the behavior of gas-filled neutron detectors, making it a valuable tool for the design and testing of systems and experiments that utilize these detectors.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2021

The upgrade of the ALICE TPC with GEMs and continuous readout

The upgrade of the ALICE TPC will allow the experiment to cope with the high interaction rates foreseen for the forthcoming Run 3 and Run 4 at the CERN LHC. In this article, we describe the design of new readout chambers and front-end electronics, which are driven by the goals of the experiment. Gas Electron Multiplier (GEM) detectors arranged in stacks containing four GEMs each, and continuous readout electronics based on the SAMPA chip, an ALICE development, are replacing the previous elements. The construction of these new elements, together with their associated quality control procedures, is explained in detail. Finally, the readout chamber and front-end electronics cards replacement, together with the commissioning of the detector prior to installation in the experimental cavern, are presented. After a nine-year period of R&D, construction, and assembly, the upgrade of the TPC was completed in 2020.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2020

Layout and performance of HPK prototype LGAD sensors for the High-Granularity Timing Detector

The High-Granularity Timing Detector is a detector proposed for the ATLAS Phase II upgrade. The detector, based on the Low-Gain Avalanche Detector (LGAD) technology, will cover the pseudo-rapidity region of 2.4 < |n| < 4.0 with two end caps on each side and a total area of 6.4 m 2 . The timing performance can be improved by implanting an internal gain layer that can produce signals with a fast rising edge. It significantly improves the signal-to-noise ratio. The required average timing resolution per track for a minimum ionizing particle is 30 ps at the start and 50 ps at the end of the HL-LHC operation. This is achieved with several layers of LGAD. The innermost region of the detector would accumulate a 1MeV neutron-equivalent fluence up to 2.5 10 15 n eq /cm 2 including a safety factor of 1.5 before being replaced during the scheduled shutdowns. The addition of this new detector is expected to play an important role in the mitigation of high pile-ups at the HL-LHC. The layout and performance of the various versions of LGAD prototypes produced by Hamamatsu (HPK) have been studied by the ATLAS Collaboration. The breakdown voltages, depletion voltages, inter-pad gaps, collected charge as well as the time resolution have been measured and the production yield of large size sensors has been evaluated.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Performance in beam tests of irradiated Low Gain Avalanche Detectors for the ATLAS High Granularity Timing Detector

The High Granularity Timing Detector (HGTD) will be installed in the ATLAS detector to mitigate pile-up effects during the High Luminosity (HL) upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN. The design of the HGTD is based on the use of Low Gain Avalanche Detectors (LGADs), with an active thickness of 50 μm, that allow to measure with high-precision the time of arrival of particles. The HGTD will improve the particle-vertex assignment by measuring the track time with a resolution ranging from approximately 30 ps at the beginning of the HL-LHC operations to 50 ps at the end. Performances of several unirradiated, as well as neutron- and proton-irradiated, LGAD sensors from different vendors have been measured in beam test campaigns during the years 2018 and 2019 at CERN SPS and DESY. This paper presents the results obtained with data recorded by an oscilloscope synchronized with a beam telescope which provides particle position information within a resolution of a few μm. Collected charge, time resolution and hit efficiency are presented. In addition to these properties, the charge uniformity is also studied as a function of the position of the incident particle inside the sensor pad.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2025

Photon counting with intensified charge coupled device (ICCD) – II. Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) spectral measurement

This study explores the application of photon counting (PC) to enhance the resolution of spectra acquired by an intensified charge-coupled device (ICCD) detector, with a focus on analytical atomic emission spectrometry using laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) as a use-case example. It demonstrates that, for spectra obtained with the same spectrometer–ICCD system, PC provides higher spectral resolution compared to conventional analog detector readout. This enhancement is particularly evident in the line wings of spectral peaks, facilitating better discrimination of isotopic peaks in the measured spectra. Although PC does not improve the resolution of an optical spectrometer directly, it rectifies the resolution lost caused by signal spreading in conventional ICCD analog measurement. However, similar to other counting techniques, excessive photons compromise detector linearity due to signal pileup. A correction model is proposed to mitigate the pileup effect, resulting in improved linearity and dynamic range in PC measurements. Additionally, the study reveals unexpected periodic structures in the flatfield image of the ICCD, which cause non-uniform detector gain in conventional analog as well as PC measurement modes and must be addressed for high-precision measurements.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗