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A large area 3He tube array detector with vacuum operation capacity for the SANS instrument at the CSNS

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abstract

The small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) instrument, one of the first three instruments of the China Spallation Neutron Source (CSNS), is designed to probe the microscopic and mesoscopic structures of materials in the scale range 1–100 nm. A large-area 3He tube array detector has been constructed and operates at the CSNS SANS instrument since August 2018. It consists of 120 linear position-sensitive detector tubes, each 1 m in length and 8 mm in diameter, and filled with 3He gas at 20 bar to obtain a high detection efficiency. The 3He tubes were divided into ten modules, providing an overall area of 1000 mm × 1020 mm with a high count rate capability. Because each tube is installed independently, the detector can be quickly repaired in situ by replacing damaged tubes. To reduce air scattering, the SANS detector must operate in a vacuum environment (0.1 mbar). An all-metal sealing technique was adopted to avoid high-voltage breakdown by ensuring a high-voltage connection and an electronic system working in an atmospheric environment. A position resolution of 7.8 ± 0.1 mm (full width at maximum) is measured along the length of the tubes, with a high detection efficiency of 81 ± 2% at 2 Å. Operating over the past four years, the detector appears to perform well and with a high stability, which supports the SANS instrument to finish approximately 200 user scientific programs.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Particle Detection and Electronics, Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Xing-Fen Jiang, Jian-Rong Zhou, Hong Luo, Liang Xiao, Xiao-Juan Zhou, Hong Xu, Yuan-Guang Xia, Xiao-Guang Wu, Lin Zhu, Wen-Qing Yang, Gui-An Yang, Bei-Ju Guan, Hong-Yu Zhang, Yu-Bin Zhao, Zhi-Jia Sun & Yuan-Bo Chen

  2. Spallation Neutron Source Science Center, Dongguan, 523803, China

    Xing-Fen Jiang, Jian-Rong Zhou, Hong Luo, Liang Xiao, Xiao-Juan Zhou, Hong Xu, Yuan-Guang Xia, Xiao-Guang Wu, Lin Zhu, Wen-Qing Yang, Gui-An Yang, Bei-Ju Guan, Hong-Yu Zhang, Yu-Bin Zhao, Zhi-Jia Sun & Yuan-Bo Chen

  3. University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100049, China

    Jian-Rong Zhou, Lin Zhu, Wen-Qing Yang, Zhi-Jia Sun & Yuan-Bo Chen

Authors
  1. Xing-Fen Jiang
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  2. Jian-Rong Zhou
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  3. Hong Luo
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  4. Liang Xiao
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  5. Xiao-Juan Zhou
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  6. Hong Xu
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  7. Yuan-Guang Xia
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  8. Xiao-Guang Wu
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  9. Lin Zhu
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  10. Wen-Qing Yang
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  11. Gui-An Yang
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  13. Hong-Yu Zhang
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  14. Yu-Bin Zhao
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  15. Zhi-Jia Sun
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  16. Yuan-Bo Chen
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Contributions

All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by Xing-Fen Jiang, Jian-Rong Zhou, Hong Luo, Liang Xiao, Xiao-Juan Zhou, Hong Xu, Yuan-Guang Xia, Xiao-Guang Wu, Lin Zhu, Wen-Qing Yang, Gui-An Yang and Bei-Ju Guan. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Xing-Fen Jiang and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jian-Rong Zhou or Zhi-Jia Sun.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2021YFA1600703), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 12175254), the Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS, the China Spallation Neutron Source Project, and the Innovative Projects of the IHEP (No. E15459U210).

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Jiang, XF., Zhou, JR., Luo, H. et al. A large area 3He tube array detector with vacuum operation capacity for the SANS instrument at the CSNS. NUCL SCI TECH 33, 89 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-022-01067-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s41365-022-01067-1

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