The ability to operate in corrosive media, at high temperatures and the tol
erance to high doses all make diamond particularly attractive for radiation
detection in hostile environments. The emergence of low cost, reproducible
, and high-quality diamond films grown by microwave plasma enhanced chemica
l vapour deposition (CVD) techniques has enabled the development of diamond
devices as radiation detectors for applications in the nuclear industry or
high-energy physics experiments. Dose rate measurements performed on CVD d
iamond detectors manufactured at CEA/LETI demonstrated the high interest of
this material for X- and gamma-ray dose rates in harsh environments. Detec
tors with active surfaces ranging from 0.5 to 20 cm(2) have been tested at
dose rates from 1 mGy/h to 1 kGy/h. Good linearity and response stability h
as been observed over six decades. Due to the large band gap of diamond (5.
5 eV), the detectors exhibit very low leakage current( < 1 pA/cm(2) at room
temperature) and can be operated at high temperatures. No significant degr
adation of the detector performances have been observed after three weeks o
f operation corresponding to an integrated dose value greater than 500 kGy,
while irradiation with a 3 x 10(5) n cm(-2) neutron fluence resulted in a
slight degradation of the charge collection efficiency of approximately 25%
. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.