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Analysis of compact and sealed RPCs feasibility

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2013 JINST 8 P03012
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P UBLISHED BY IOP P UBLISHING FOR S ISSA M EDIALAB

R ECEIVED: August 20, 2012
ACCEPTED: February 4, 2013
P UBLISHED: March 18, 2013

S PECIAL I SSUE ON R ESISTIVE P LATE C HAMBERS AND R ELATED D ETECTORS RPC2012

b and J.A. Garzon

a
M. Morales,a,1 J.L. Rodrguez-Sanchez
a LabCAF,

F. Fisica, Univ. Santiago de Compostela,

Santiago de Compostela, Spain
b Department of Particle Physics, Univ. Santiago de Compostela,
Santiago de Compostela, Spain

E-mail: miguel.morales@usc.es
A BSTRACT: In this article, the feasibility of developing compact and portable float glass sealed
Resistive Plate Chambers, sRPCs, is analyzed. For this purpose, several small (80 cm2 ) sealed
chambers have been constructed using inexpensive materials like windows float glass, copper tape
and nylon fishing line. For the sake of simplicity, during this first development stage, only R134a
has been used as ionizing gas.
In order to distinguish gas leakage from internal gas degradation, a couple of sRPCs were
tested inside a box with flowing gas: one with R134a and another with N2 . Prompt charge, signal
rising slope and operational current were used to assess chambers performance degradation during a
two-week period. Regarding these variables, small leakages were spotted as the main reason for the
performance degradation observed after about one week of steady operation at the sRPC working
in N2 environment. The sRPC working in an R134a environment did not show any significative
degradation during the whole test. A discussion on merits and limitations of the proposed design
is provided.
K EYWORDS : Detector design and construction technologies and materials; Resistive-plate chambers; Gaseous detectors; Data acquisition circuits

1 Corresponding

author.

c 2013 IOP Publishing Ltd and Sissa Medialab srl

doi:10.1088/1748-0221/8/03/P03012

2013 JINST 8 P03012

Analysis of compact and sealed RPCs feasibility

Contents
Motivation: small and portable RPCs

Experimental setup

Results and discussion

Summary and conclusions

Motivation: small and portable RPCs

Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) belong to the family of gas ionization detectors, perhaps the
broader group of devices used to measure ionization radiation. In some detectors of the family, like
the Geiger Muller counters, a sealed volume is filled with an ionizing gas mixture, being able to
sustain approximate constant performances for a long time. Other detectors, like drift chambers,
usually have large sizes and require an external gas system to maintain proper operation.
Timing RPC (tRPCs) characteristically provide an outstanding time resolution, usually below
100 ps, by using several very narrow gaps, working in avalanche mode and incorporating high
frequency preamplifiers. RPCs usually run reasonably well while gas keeps flowing through the
chamber. However, relying on bulky gas systems [1] is not always possible or simple and the need
arises for recycling gas back into the system [2]. Besides, the lack of portability of such gas systems
does not allow RPCs to be used in relatively small setups.
This work has focused mainly in the development of small timing RPCs able to operate, as
Geiger-Muller counters, without the need for an external gas flowing system. Such a detector might
be of interest in small experimental setups needing to take data for short periods of time. Table 1
shows a rough comparison between a regular small Geiger counter and a small one-gap RPC cell.
At this first stage, our main goal has been exploring the feasibility of such small and autonomous detectors, starting with a very simple and compact design and analyzing their behavior
in a short period of time (two weeks). Such devices can be very easily built in a few hours with
non-expensive materials.

Experimental setup

Figure 1a shows a picture of a sealed RPC inside a test box. The resistive electrodes were made of
(160 50 2) mm3 float glass with a resistivity of = 5 1012 cm. Gas gaps were defined by
0.3 mm nylon fishing line spacers and sealed with Teflon band and epoxy glue (Araldite-Standard).
High voltage was applied by means of 150 40 mm2 copper tape electrodes as it is shown in
figure 1. The signals were picked up at both sides of that electrode. Electrodes of the same size
were used to ground the external resistive plates at both faces of the detector. The chambers were

2013 JINST 8 P03012

Table 1: Geiger Muller counter and one-gap sRPC gas chamber comparative.

Geiger Muller
28 20 mm3
560 mm3
434 mm2
1 mm1
Neon/Argon + Halogen gas
Geiger-Muller
550 V
1/r

R134a / N2

Gas input

Al box
Cu electrodes

Epoxy glue
2 nF

1 M

40 mm

150 mm

Gas output

High
Voltage
2 nF

sRPC
Glass

Teflon tape
100 k

Ground

(a) First prototype of a two-gap sRPC in a test box.

(b) Electrical layout of a sRPC inside the gas box

Figure 1: Two-gap sRPC

filled with R134a gas. The basic layout of a detector and the electrical layout used in our tests is
shown in figure 1b.
Two sealed chambers, installed inside a gas-tight box, were operated in avalanche mode with
two different gas environments: one with flowing N2 , in order to identify any leakage and a possible
external contamination, and another with flowing R134a, in order to compensate gas leakage and
to highlight any inner gas degradation. An identical unsealed RPC was built and used as reference
chamber for verifying the results obtained with the sealed RPCs.
In order to analyze the behavior of the sealed chambers, the experimental setup shown in figure 2 was constructed, allowing to simultaneously measure operational current, event rates, signal
waveforms and temperature. As ionizing radiation a 22 Na gamma source was used. A decaying
nuclide produces an e+ which, after its annihilation with an e of the medium, yields two gammas
going in opposite directions. These radioactive source was placed between the RPC under test and
an external fast scintillator arrangement consisting of a 12 3 cm2 BC422 Bicron scintillator, read
out at both sides by two H6533 Hamamatsu fast photomultipliers (PMs). The distances to both
detectors were big enough ( 20 cm) to avoid any counting saturation. With this setup, signals
coming from the same annihilation being in coincidence with both detectors could be selected.

2013 JINST 8 P03012

Usual sizes
Gas Volume (V)
Inner surface (S)
S/V ratio
Gas mixture
Working mode
Usual Voltage
Electric field

sRPC
40 40 0.3 mm3
480 mm3
3250 mm2
6.8 mm1
R134a/SF6/Isobutane
Avalanche
3000 V
constant

CAEN
N471a

Intensity
Monitor, I

INA118

Bridge Amplifier

Arduino Mega
Atmega1280

ADC
MCP3424

File1
sRPC

PT100 Sensor

sRPC
22

Temperature, T

CAEN
2255A
Dual Timer

Camberra
2071A
Counter

Labjack U3-HV
DAQ Board

Rates

sRPC + PMs
BGM
1013

Na

Waveform

CAEN
N625

Trigger

FI/FO

Oscilloscope
TEK TDS7104

Digitized
Waveforms

File2

PM1
PM2

CAEN
N840
O. Disc

CAEN
N455
Quad. Coinc.

Figure 2: Acquisition setup.

Signal readout was carried out with a charge-sensitive preamplifier based on the Phillips
BGM1013 integrated preamplifier, providing a gain of 35.5 dB at 1 GHz. The amplified signal
was split with a CAEN N454 Fan In/Fan Out module. One of the output waveforms was digitized
with a 1 GHz bandwidth TDS7104 Tektronix oscilloscope and then stored in a file for its offline
analysis. The second signal was used in coincidence with the scintillator output to provide a coincidence trigger with gammas produced by the radioactive source. All the rates of the detector and
both PMs were measured by a Canberra 2071A counter and stored in a file by means of an Labjack
U3-HV acquisition board.
High voltage was provided by a CAEN N471A high voltage power supply. The operational
current was monitorized by the built-in analog socket that, according to the manufacturer technical
specifications, provides an accuracy of 2%10 nA. In order to improve the resolution of the
operational current monitoring, an electronic add-on was used. It consisted of a bridge amplifier,
INA118, and a high resolution ADC, MCP3424; the devices were configured as shown in figure 2.
In this way, calibrating the system with the help of a 0.1 nA accurate Philips PM2525 amperemeter,
and taking 15 samples per second, the current accuracy was enhanced up to 0.2 nA.
Using the described experimental setup, our detectors were operated in a controlled temperature environment, with the capability of monitoring the main working variables. It is worth noting
that no atmospheric pressure correction has been made in the analysis of the sealed RPCs data.
As these are closed systems, the mass width of the gas stays constant regardless of the external
pressure. As a consequence, no large variations in the counting are expected. The main variables
informing about the properties of the detectors that have been analyzed are: signal amplitude and
rising slope, prompt charge and time resolution.

Results and discussion

The behavior of the sealed RPCs has been analyzed and compared to the behaviour of the reference
chamber. The first variable analyzed is the operational current. It is well known that it gives a good

2013 JINST 8 P03012

BC422 Scint.

I, T

DAQ Board

P. Supply

1.0

Current[nA]- Oset

Current[nA]

0.8

1.0

R134a
R134a/SF6/Isobutane (85/10/5)

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.6

0.4

0.2

0.0
2.8

2.9

3.0
Ve[kV]

3.1

3.2

(a) Operational current dependence with the effective

electric field for the reference RPC with both R134a and
R134a/SF6/Ibutane (85/10/5) gas mixture.

2.6

2.7

2.8

2.9
Ve[kV]

3.0

3.1

(b) Operational current trend of the reference RPC, inside

a box filled with R134a, with the effective electric field
after several days of steady operation.

Figure 3: Analysis of the operational current behavior with both R134a and standard gas mixture
with the boxed sRPCs.

insight on the intensity of the gas drifting [4], as long as it is related with both multiplication and
attachment coefficients of the gas [5]. Therefore, the gas condition is expected to be the main wearing out factor. In such small RPCs, a current accuracy better than 1 nA is required to provide some
insight of the processes happening in the gas in short time (a few days) periods. For this purpose the
effective voltage Ve f is used. It is the actual voltage existing in the gas gap, i.e. the external power
supply voltage minus the drop of voltage at the resistive plates. Analyzing the operational current at different applied voltages, our setup allows to detect any possible gas degradation studying
the evolution of the monitored current. Figure 3a shows the difference in the current, at different
voltage Ve f , for two well known gases mixtures: R134a and R134a/SF6/Isobutane (85/10/5) [6].
Figure 3b shows the evolution of the current of the reference RPCs, placed inside a closed gas box,
along a period of three weeks; the observed changes in the current may be due to minor leakages.
Figure 4 show the evolution of the measured rates in coincidence for all the analyzed chambers; figure insets show the corresponding evolution of the external daily averaged temperature.
Regarding the reference RPC, figure 4a shows that it reaches the stability from the very beginning,
with a rate of 6.4 0.2 Hz; almost two times the one of sealed RPCs. The temperature stayed stable by 0.5 C. Figure 4b shows the behavior of the sRPC inside the box with flowing R134a. The
1 nA current fluctuations observed during the first days may be due to the 3 C uncontrolled
changes in the temperature. This is a very well known effect that has been thoroughly studied
in [3]. After the fifth day both, rate and current, stayed stable for the rest of the experiment.
Finally, figure 4c shows that the sRPC operated in the box with flowing N2 stayed stable
during the first 6-7 days. Later, the measured current started to grow steadily while the rate started
to decrease after the 12th day.
It is interesting to realize that, from the very beginning sealed chambers provide both lower
rates and larger currents than the reference RPC. This effect may be caused by the electrical prop-

2013 JINST 8 P03012

0.0
2.7

Boxed tRPC
Day 1
Day 10
Day 20

0.8

11

T(C)

Rate
Current

Rate(Hz)

6
5
2

8
10
Time(days)

12

14

Current(nA)

10

25
24
23
22
21
20

5
2
4
1

0
0

10

11

12

13

14

15

Time(days)

(a) Reference RPC.

11

T (C)

Rate
Current

Rate(Hz)

22
21
20

5
2

8
10
Time (days)

12

14

Current(nA)

10

25
24
23

5
2
4
1

3
2

0
1

7
8
9
Time (days)

10

11

12

13

14

(b) sRPC working inside a box with R134a.

10

T(C)

Rate
Current

9
8

25
24
23
22
21
20

Rate(Hz)

8
10
Time(days)

12

14

Current(nA)

11

5
2
4
1

3
2

0
1

7
8
9
Time(days)

10

11

12

13

14

(c) sRPC working inside a box with N2.

Figure 4: In this figures main frame, rate and the operational current for the different RPCs setups
along two week time are shown where the insets show the laboratory temperature as reference.

erties of the Araldite-glue that may shunt electrical charges between HV and ground.
Figure 5 shows the prompt charge, defined as the amplitude of the amplified and digitized

2013 JINST 8 P03012

Day 7 (1543 events)

Probability

Probability

Day 1 (1532 events)

10-1

0.07

Day 1 (1502 events)

Day 7 (1445 events)

0.06

Day 14 (1628 events)

Day 14 (1640 events)

0.05
0.04

10-2

0.03
0.02
10-3

0.01
0

500

1000

1500
2000
2500
Prompt charge [ADC units]

0.2

0.4

Day 1 (2732 events)

Day 7 (2918 events)
Day 14 (2133 events)

10-2

1.2

1.4

1.6
1.8
1/v(dv/dt)[1/ns]

(b) Reference RPC.

Probability

Probability

10-1

0.8

0.1
Day 1 (2495 events)
Day 7 (2706 events)

0.08

Day 14 (1627 events)

0.06
0.04

10-3
0.02

500

1000

1500

0
0

2000
2500
Prompt charge [ADC units]

10-1

Day 1 (2732 events)

Day 7 (2118 events)
Day 14 (2370 events)

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.2

1.4

1.6
1.8
1/v(dv/dt)[1/ns]

(d) sRPC inside a box with R134a.

Probability

Probability

(c) sRPC inside a box with R134a.

0.2

0.1

Day 1 (2502 events)

Day 7 (1745 events)

0.08

Day 14 (2137 events)

0.06

10-2

0.04
0.02
10-3
0

500

1000

0
0

1500
2000
2500
Prompt charge [ADC units]

(e) sRPC inside a box with N2.

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.2

1.4

1.6 1.8
1/v(dv/dt)[1/ns]

(f) sRPC inside a box with N2.

Figure 5: Distributions of both the prompt charge and slopes for all the RPCs analyzed in a 7 days
pace over the experiment time. Differences in the number of entries are a consequence of changes
in the measuring time and the oscilloscope working mode.

signal, of the three detectors during periods of two weeks. Figure 5a shows how, in the reference
RPC, the charge stays constant during the whole period, as it was expected. Figure 5c shows how,
at the sRPC in R134a, a significative amount of larger charges do appear from the very beginning
to, later, decrease slightly with time; this effect might be a consequence of the decrease of the
temperature in 2 C during the data taking period. However, figure 5e shows how, at the sRPC
working in N2 , there is shift towards higher charges with time.

2013 JINST 8 P03012

(a) Reference RPC.

0.6

Low prompt charge ratio

0.9
0.8
0.7
0.6
0.5
0.4
1

7
8
9
Time (days)

10

11

12

13

14

Figure 6: Low prompt charge ratio for reference RPC and sRPC immersed two gas environments,
R134a and Nitrogen.

As, in this case, the temperature stayed within 1 C during the whole period, the observed
behavior might be a consequence of the degradation of the detector due to some gas contamination.
This effect is the same already shown in figure 4c for operational current. Figures 5b, 5d and 5f
show the distribution of the rising slopes, measured between the 10% and 90% of the amplitude
for the respective detectors. In both, the reference RPC and the sRPC working in R134a gas
environment, the slopes show the same behavior through time. By contrast, the sRPC working in
N2 environment shows an increase in fast signals with time. The greater abundance of large charges
observed in both sRPCs might be related to the higher currents already reported for those chambers.
Figure 6 summarizes the behavior of the sRPCs already discussed in the previous paragraphs
compared to the reference chamber. It shows the evolution in time of the ratio between low charges
and all the prompt charges. The threshold between low and high charges was set at 1000 ADC
units. It can be seen how the ratio stays constant for the reference RPC, and decreases slightly
for the sRPC working in the R134a gas box, fact that can be explained as due to changes in the
temperature. On the other hand, the behavior of the sRPC working in a N2 environment, on the
other side, stays constant during about 6-7 days, starting then a steady decrease, possibly due to gas
contamination. The smaller ratios observed in both sRPCs might be due to the same effect already
observed in the prompt charges distributions.

Summary and conclusions

Resistive Plate Chambers are very useful detectors whenever good time resolution is needed for
the counting of charged particles. However, usually they require very bulky gas systems and, as
consequence, their use is often limited to big experimental setups. The use of sealed RPCs, sRPCs,
might be an acceptable alternative in small experiments, or at places with difficult access, acquiring
data during short periods of time (a few days). They might also be very appropriate for triggering
in low rate experiments.

2013 JINST 8 P03012

Standard RPC
sRPC inside R134a box
sRPC inside N2 box

Acknowledgments
We thank the LIP-Coimbra members: Luis Lopes, Alberto Blanco and Paulo Fonte for sharing with
us their invaluable knowledge on RPCs detectors and Georgy Kornakov, from the LabCAF, for his
very useful technical support and interesting assesments.

References
[1] S. Kalmani, N. Mondal, B. Satyanarayana, P. Verma and A. Joshi, On-line gas mixing and
multi-channel distribution system, Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A 602 (2009) 845.
[2] D.M. Rossi and H. Simon, A closed-circuit gas recycling system for RPC detectors, Nucl. Instrum.
Meth. A 661 (2012) S230.
[3] D. Gonzalez-Diaz et al., The effect of temperature on the rate capability of glass timing RPCs, Nucl.
Instrum. Meth. A 555 (2005) 72.
[4] S. Ramo, Currents Induced by Electron Motion, Proc. IRE 27 (1939) 584-585.
[5] W. Riegler, C. Lippmann and R. Veenhof, Detector physics and simulation of resistive plate chambers,
Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A 500 (2003) 144.
[6] L. Lopes, P. Fonte and A. Mangiarotti, Systematic study of gas mixtures for timing RPCs, Nucl.
Instrum. Meth. A 661 (2012) S194.

2013 JINST 8 P03012

Several compact, two-gap sRPCs (with a gas volume of 2.4 cm3 ) have been built with very
common materials and their properties have been compared with those of a reference open RPC.
Namely, the behavior in time of their operational current, working rate and prompt charge distributions has been analyzed. The sRPCs behaved smoothly during about 6-7 days before showing
any appreciable change. However, from the very beginning, the measured current and the observed
prompt charge distributions differed from the figures supplied by the reference chamber. This effect
might be caused by the electrical conductivity of the glue used in their manufacture.
The sRPC working inside an R134a environment did not show any changes during a two week
period, indicating that the gas did not suffer any significant aging during that time. Concerning
the properties of a sRPC working within a N2 environment, it started to degrade after about one
week time, indicating the presence of small leaks. This might originate in the difficulties to achieve
a good fixing between the used glue and the glass. This issue might be corrected in the future
performing a specific treatment of the glass before the gluing process.
Results given in this article are very encouraging because they prove the feasibility of very
easy developing small and compact RPCs able to show a steady operation for periods longer than
one week. This kind of one-way detectors may offer a very useful alternative whenever a sudden
need of a good time resolution detector is needed. More work is still needed in order to analyze the
performance stability of the detectors, namely the efficiency and the time resolution, using several
different designs.