Soda-glass capillary plate gas detector

A new capillary plate (CP) has been developed for a hole-type micropattern gas detector. The plate consists of a bundle of fine soda-glass capillaries with a diameter of 100 /spl mu/m and a length of 1 mm. The electrodes on the surfaces of both ends of CP were coated with Inconel metal. The plate is similar to a conventional CP, except that the material used is not lead glass, but soda glass. The main advantages of the soda-glass CP compared to the lead-glass CP are a low surface resistivity and low background properties. The soda-glass CP gas detector was operated with a gas mixture of Ar(90%) + CH/sub 4/(8%) + TMA(2%) using 5.9 keV X-rays. Using the scintillation light emitted from the soda-glass CP, we successfully obtained the energy spectrum and accumulated image for the 5.9 keV X-rays. In this paper, we report on the characteristics of the new soda-glass CP and the background properties of both the soda-glass and lead-glass CPs. We also describe the outlook on the future development of an optical gas photomultiplier with the soda-glass CP.