SBIR PHASE I: Microporous Alumina Microchannel Plates

SBIR PHASE I：微孔氧化铝微通道板

• 批准号: 9561706
• 负责人: Charles Beetz
• 金额: $ 7.48万
• 依托单位: NANOSCIENCES CORP
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1996
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1996-06-01 至 1996-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9561706&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; PHASE; Microporous; Alumina; Microchannel

Microchannel plates (MCP) are essential for high gain imaging and detection applications in science, medicine, and industry. They have superior temporal resolution for incident charged and UV/x-ray particles, operate in high magnetic fields, and are essential for many particle detection applications in scientific instrumentation, such as scintillating fiber particle trackers. However, most existing MCP are fabricated from activated glass and suffer from a gain that falls rapidly with the cumulative charge per area collected from the MCP. Furthermore, MCP are expensive, available in limited areas, have significant spatial non-uniformities, and radiation damage readily. We propose to overcome many of these difficulties by using anodized aluminum plates as the basis of an MCP. When formed under controlled anodization, amorphous alumina contains open, densely packed, straight micropores, oriented perpendicular to the surface, with a length to diameter ratio appropriate for microchannel gain. Pure alumina has a sufficient secondary emission gain so that the pores can serve as gain channels, without activation, or contaminating materials. We anticipate that this ceramic material will have superior stability and lifetime properties to those of glass MCP, at very low cost, with the potential of large MCP areas. The microporous MCP matrix could result in much better spatial resolution and spatial uniformity than existing MCP, with high radiation resistance. The gain stability and long life will enable the fast, compact MCP technology to be used much more widely in a large variety of vacuum electronics amplification applications. In Phase I, we propose to fabricate prototype amorphous alumina MCP's by anodization, and measure gain, gain stability and spatial properties. If successful, micro/nanochannel plates (M/NCP) with a much longer operational life compared with current MCP would result, and could enable ultrafast, gated, compact, high magnetic field, radiation-hard MCP photomultipliers (PMT); (2) long lived image intensifiers/ converters with sub-micron spatial resolution; (3) flat panel vacuum phospher displays; (4) imaging charged particle/x-ray detectors with high gain and sub-micron spatial resolution.

微通道板（MCP）对于科学，医学和工业中的高增益成像和检测应用至关重要。它们具有用于高磁场的紫外线和紫外线/X射线颗粒的较高时间分辨率，对于科学仪器中的许多粒子检测应用至关重要，例如闪烁的纤维颗粒跟踪器。但是，大多数现有的MCP都是用活化玻璃制成的，并且遭受了迅速下降的收益，而从MCP收集的每个区域的累积电荷都会降低。此外，MCP很昂贵，在有限的区域可用，具有明显的空间不均匀性，并且容易造成辐射损坏。 我们建议通过使用阳极铝板作为MCP的基础来克服许多困难。当在受控阳极阳极下形成时，无定形氧化铝包含开放的，密集的，直的微孔，定向垂直于表面，其长度与直径比适合微通道增益。纯氧化铝具有足够的二级发射增益，因此毛孔可以充当增益通道，而无需激活或污染材料。我们预计这种陶瓷材料的稳定性和寿命性能将比玻璃MCP具有较低的成本，其可能是大型MCP区域的潜力。与现有的MCP相比，微孔MCP矩阵可能导致空间分辨率和空间均匀性更好，并且具有较高的辐射电阻。增益稳定性和长寿将使快速，紧凑的MCP技术能够在各种真空电子设备放大应用中更广泛地使用。 在第一阶段，我们建议通过阳极氧化并测量增益，增益稳定性和空间特性来制造原型的无定形氧化铝MCP。 如果成功，与当前MCP相比，操作寿命更长的微/纳米通道板（M/NCP）将产生，并且可以使超快，门控，紧凑，高磁场，辐射HARD-MCP PhotoLultipliers（PMT）（PMT）； （2）具有亚微米空间分辨率的长期寿命增强剂/转换器； （3）平面真空磷蛋白显示； （4）具有高增益和亚微米空间分辨率的成像带电粒子/X射线检测器。