Study of the characteristics of a piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate radiation detector using a pulsed xenon source

The detector characteristics of piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate (PZT) were studied by directly irradiating a multilayered PZT detector with 400 MeV/n xenon ions. An extracted beam was processed with a rotating slit. Thus, passed through ∼103 xenon ions were available for 50 to 250 μs. The effect of polarization on the output signal was discussed, and the optimal electrode configuration was determined. The output signal appeared as an isolated pulse whose amplitude was qualitatively understood by the Bethe–Bloch formula. However, the calculated and the observed values differed depending on the rotation speed of the slit. A process that can explain the differences is presented here. The output signal appearing beyond the range of 400 MeV/n xenon ion beam was discussed. The sensitivity was compared with that obtained with hypervelocity collision of dust.