Microchannel plates

NOV 01, 1977

Sophisticated fabrication techniques have made it possible to create these new detectors for photons—and other radiations—with good time resolution and low noise, and with special advantages for imaging.

DOI: 10.1063/1.3037791

Branko Leskovar

For more than forty years researchers have applied the phenomenon of photoemission to convert absorbed incident radiation into an electron stream, which is then amplified by a secondary‐emission process. The resulting fast high‐gain photon detectors, such as photomultipliers and electron multipliers, are among the fastest and most sensitive devices for recording the collision of a photon (or electron, atom or energetic ion) with a target surface. These detectors have gained wide acceptance in research instrumentation, particularly in mass spectroscopy and scintillation spectroscopy, as well as in optical ranging and optical communication systems. Recently a new—faster, less noisy and more efficient—type of radiation detector has been developed, consisting of a plate traversed by a large number of microscopic channels that serve as electron multipliers.

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More about the authors

Branko Leskovar, University of California.