A DOUBLE-SIDED SILICON STRIP DETECTOR SYSTEM FOR PROTON RADIOACTIVITY STUDIES

A new double-sided silicon strip detector has been developed to study the phenomenon of ground-state proton radioactivity. Highly proton-rich fusion-evaporation reaction products are velocity and mass separated using the Daresbury recoil separator before being implanted into the strip detector located at the separator focal plane. The double-sided strip detector has 48 strips per face with a pitch of 335-mu-m. Front and back strips are orthogonal providing an effective pixel area of 0.09 mm2, enabling correlations between implanted ions and subsequent decays to be clearly established. Test results obtained using the reactions Ni-58 + MO-92 --> 150Yb* and Ni-58 + Fe-54 --> 112Xe* are reported. In the latter commissioning experiment the proton decay of 109I was unambiguously established using the correlated decay sequence 109I p --> 108Te alpha --> 104Sn.