Gain measurements on NLGAD detectors

In the last few years, Low Gain Avalanche Detectors (LGAD) have demonstrated their outstanding performance when detecting high-energy charged particles. However, due to the difference in the multiplication mechanism for holes and electrons, the detection performance for low penetrating particles (e.g low-energy protons or soft x-rays) is significantly reduced. A novel design of an LGAD detector, the NLGAD, was designed and fabricated at CNM to overcome this drawback. A qualitative description of the NLGAD concept is presented in this work, along with gain response measurements of the first prototypes under visible light of 660 nm and 15 keV x-rays. Additionally, a review of the gain response under visible light of 404 nm and IR light of 1064 nm, previously studied, is also evaluated in this work. The results demonstrate that the NLGAD concept has the potential to detect low penetrating particles.