Design of a delay-line position-sensitive detector with improved performance

A delay-line position-sensitive detector with improved performance is presented. In this device, timing is carried out by means of fast digitizer boards. The use of dedicated signal processing procedures leads to a timing accuracy of 70 ps and a dead-time below 1.5 ns. As a result, the spatial resolving power of this detector is close to 1 mm leading to a high multihit capability. A temporary detector has been designed in which the delay-line anode is combined with a phosphor screen allowing additional positioning to be made via a charge-coupled device camera. This additional positioning is used to unambiguously quantify performances in terms of spatial resolution and multihit capabilities. A three-dimensional atom probe analysis of a material containing low evaporation field phases is used to demonstrate the capabilities of this detector. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics.