STATUS OF DIAMOND PARTICLE DETECTORS

To continue the exciting research in the field of particle physics new accelerators and experiments are under construction. In some of these experiments, e.g. ATLAS and CMS at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN or HERA-B at DESY, the detectors have to withstand an extreme environm ent. The detectors must be radiation hard, provide a very fast signal, and be as thin as possible. The properties of CVD diamond allow to fu lfill these requirements and make it an ideal material for the detecto rs close to the interaction region of these experiments, i.e. the vert ex detectors or the inner trackers. The RD42 collaboration is developi ng diamond detectors for these applications. The program of RD42 inclu des the improvement of the charge collection properties of CVD diamond , the study of the radiation hardness and the development of low-noise radiation hard readout electronics. An overview of the progress achie ved during the last years will be given. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V . All rights reserved.