Speaker
Description
The Laminar Microchannel Plate (LMCP) design incorporating surface direct conversion (SDC) is a proposed design approach for high-resolution gamma ray detectors. The design is compatible with high-throughput fabrication methods therefore attractive for applications requiring high coverage and fiducial volume. A key challenge is that the space of design possibilities is simply too large to explore by fabrication trial and error. In this investigation, Monte Carlo simulations were used to guide efforts to optimize a subset of variables that characterize the design of the individual lamina unit cell for SDC of 511 keV gamma rays in Time-of-Flight Positron Emission Tomography (TOF-PET) applications: 1) lamina material type, 2) lamina dimension 𝑇, and 3) lamina dimension 𝜏.The first variable explored different types of lamina material for their ability to generate primary electrons,starting with both low-𝑍 (𝑍< 20) and high-𝑍 (𝑍>50) mono-elemental materials,and then moving on to complex low-𝑍 materials of borosilicate glass and Kapton. When the effects of the combination of both lamina material type and the second variable explored in this investigation (lamina dimension 𝑇) were investigated, results indicated that both mono-elemental and complex low-𝑍 materials only exhibited primary electron generation efficiencies higher than those obtained for high-𝑍 materials when 𝑇 was greater than 177.8 mm. The final variable explored in this investigation for the design of the lamina was the critical lamina dimension 𝜏, which impacts the escape efficiency of the primary electron. For the lamina dimension 𝜏 = 125𝜇m, a maximum primary electron escape efficiency of ∼43% was obtained when the lamina material is Kapton and its lamina dimension is 304.8 mm. These simulation results pave the way for understanding the fabrication process of this novel detector architecture for ToF-PET.