Research on the temperature characteristics of SiPM-based LaBr3(Ce) detectors

When a satellite-borne detector is being ground calibrated, a standard detector is required to determine the monochromatic X-ray beam energy and intensity. For this purpose, a SiPM-based LaBr3(Ce) detector has been developed. The environmental temperature change may substantially affect the performance of the detector, thus affecting the accuracy of the ground calibration results. To study the effect of temperature change on the performance of the LaBr3(Ce) detector, the performance of the LaBr3(Ce) detector was tested with 241Am and 137Cs γ-ray sources in the high- and low-temperature test chambers. The results showed that within the range of – 20 to 40 °C, the energy resolution of the LaBr3(Ce) detector does not change by more than 1%, nor does the peak-to-total ratio of 241Am and 137Cs. The temperature change has little effect on the performance of the LaBr3(Ce) detector, which meets the requirements for use as a beam monitor. However, the peak location of the radioactive source varies significantly with temperature, and the difference with the peak location at room temperature is within 17%. To reduce the variation in the gain of the LaBr3(Ce) detector with temperature, it is necessary to optimize the compensation design of the temperature gain to ensure the stability of the detector gain at various temperatures.