Gas Electron Multipliers for Potential Applications to Digital Radiography

The gas electron multiplier (GEM), placed in the drift volume of a conventional gas detector, is a conceptually simple device for producing a large gas gain by concentrating the drift electric field over a very short distance to the point that electron avalanching occurs. This device consists of a thin insulating foil of several tens of μm in thickness, covered on each side with a thin metal layer, with tiny holes, usually 100 μm or less in diameter, and with a spacing of 100-200 μm through the entire foil, perforated by using chemical etching or high-powered laser beam technique. In this study, we have investigated its operating properties with various experimental conditions and demonstrated the possibility of using this device as a digital X-ray imaging sensor, by acquiring X-ray images based upon the scintillation lights of the GEM with a standard CCD camera.