Advances in Semiconductor Detectors for Charged Particle Space Spectrometry

Nuclear semiconductor detectors have been limited in their dynamic range of linearity of pulse height versus energy for charged particle spectrometry because of (1) the depth of the sensitive volume, (2) the thickness of any entrance window, and (3) the noise level of the detector-amplifier system. Consideration has been given to extend the range of sensitivity by increasing the volume of the detector by lithium ion drift compensation and to increase the sensitivity to lower energies by removing any entrance window and reducing the noise level of the detector and the amplifier.