Development of resistive plate counters

Abstract A dc operated particle detector has been developed and tested, whose constituent elements are two parallel electrode bakelite plates between which, in a 1.5 mm gap, a gas mixture of argon and butane at ordinary pressure is circulated. The counter has 97% efficiency and ∼1 ns time resolution at an operating voltage of about 10 kV. The output pulse needs no amplification, being typically 300 mV over 25 Ω.