This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will provide the National Science Foundation with the design, analysis and key components of a particle detector. This innovative particle detector will use a new scintillator material, BaCl2, whose principal decay component is extremely fast (efold time about one nanosec, brightness excess BGO). The PHI team will apply this new scintillator as a thin film over a commercially available plastic scintillator channel plate (holes 100 microns or more). PHI will use the combined scintillator sandwich as a detector to separate alpha and beta particle radiation. Our team will use the scintillator package with commercially available silicon position sensitive detectors and photomultipliers to measure both the energy and spatial location of the incoming particles. The proposed detector has a high efficiency and is resistant to radiation damage. The unique time of flight technique proposed for PHI particle detector provides both excellent energy resolution and good spatial resolution. The PHI team will demonstrate crystalline BaCl2 and plastic sandwich during Phase I. OCA Applied Optics, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL), and the Universities of Southwest Louisiana and Arizona will work collaboratively to move this project forward.
