CVD DIAMOND DETECTORS

Diamond has many attractive properties which make it an ideal material both for particle detection in high-energy physics experiments and fo r dosimetry in medical fields. Up to early 1990, diamond has not found widespread applications in these fields because of the high cost and of the difficulties in selecting natural gems of suitable quality. wit h low levels of impurity content and crystal defects, which limit the carrier lifetime. The recently developed diamond manufacturing technol ogy by chemical vapour deposition (CVD) has the potential of allowing low cost production of diamond in large sheets, with higher purity tha n natural diamond. In this pager re present a review of the most recen t features and applications of CVD diamond as nuclear and X-ray/gamma- ray detector. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.