Feasibility Study of Gas Electron Multiplier Detector as an X-Ray Image Sensor

For its ease manufacturing, flexible geometry, and cheap manufacturing cost, the gas electron multiplier (GEM) detector can be used as an x-ray image sensor. For this purpose, we acquired relative detection efficiencies and suggested a method to increase the detection efficiency in order to study the possibility of GEM detector as an x-ray image sensor. The GEM detector system is composed of GEM foils, the instrument system, the gas system, and the negative power supply. The instrument system consists of the A225 charge sensitive preamp, A206 discriminator, and MCA8000D multichannel analyzer. For the gas system, Argon gas was mixed with CO2 to the ratio of 8:2, and for the negative 2,000 volts, the 3106D power supply was used. The CsI-coated GEM foil was used to increase the detection efficiency. Fe-55 was used as an x-ray source and the relative efficiency was acquired by using the ratio of GEM detector to the CdTe detector. The total count method and the energy spectrum method were used to calculate the relative efficiency. The relative detection efficiency of GEM detector for Fe-55 by using total count method was 32 % and by using energy spectrum method, the relative efficiencies were 5, 43, 33, 37, 35, and 36 % respectively according to the energy spectrum of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7 KeV. In conclusion, we found that the detection efficiency of the two layered GEM detector is insufficient for the x-ray image sensor, so we suggested a CsI coated GEM foil to increase the efficiency rate and the result value was increased to 41 %.