The latest developments of high-gain Si microchannel plates

We present our latest results in the development of Silicon micromachined microchannel plates, which open completely new possibilities in the detector technologies. For the first time Z-stacks of Si microchannel plates with pore bias of 5-8 degrees were tested in a high gain photon counting imaging detector without any post-amplification stage with conventional glass MCP's. The gain of Z-stacks of Si (40:1 L/D, 6 μm pores on 8 μm centers, 18-25 mm in diameter) MCP's was found to be as high as ~106 with peaked pulse height distribution. The full-field illumination images appeared to be quite uniform, with relatively small (~±10%) gain variation. Quantum efficiency of opaque diamond photocathode deposited on Si MCP was measured in reflection mode and compared with the performance of flat-substrate diamond photocathodes. We also present the results of our study of long-term gain stability of Si MCP's: variation of Si MCP gain as a function of extracted charge was investigated.

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