Author: Henry Matthew ThurstonPublisher:
ISBN:
Category : Electronic dissertations
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This work investigates the use of single crystal diamond in sensing technologies. First, homoepitaxial chemical vapor deposition (CVD) grown semiconducting diamond is used to build an ultra-fast neutron detector. Diamond based neutron detectors are extant technology, but typically limited to neutron energies of less than 14 MeV. This work introduces the Positionally Opposed Schottky Semi-Metal (POSSM) solid state neutron detector. The POSSM device employs two boron-doped P-type semiconducting diamonds in conjunction with a lanthanide foil to create a pair of Schottky junction diodes with a shared cathode. Under reverse bias the diamond-Schottky diodes have undetectable reverse bias leakage current, resulting in a detector with excellent signal-to-noise properties. Preamplifier circuitry has been designed to exploit the favorable properties of the Schottky architecture. Field testing of the device at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center (LANSCE) yielded successful ultra-fast neutron detection with excellent charge conversion efficiency. Several drawbacks were identified in the performance of the POSSM detector, mainly involving durability of the diodes and speed of the preamplifier. An improved design was developed and is presented in this work, though the improved design has not been built.Secondly, this work presents a novel framework for the simulation of quantum color center formation in diamond. Diamond color centers have been shown to have unique quantum spin properties making them of interest to quantum computing and field sensing. A mesoscale reaction-diffusion framework is developed and a computational solver is built. The Color Center ANnealing And Reaction-Diffusion (CCANARD) program solves the nonlinear reaction-diffusion system by linearization using the Gateaux Derivative and the Crank-Nicolson method. CCANARD is benchmarked for computational efficiency and accuracy. The results are presented and analyzed. An experiment is proposed to further test and develop CCANARD.