Detection of charged particles in thick hydrogenated amorphous silicon layers

We show our results in detecting particles of various linear energy transfer, including minimum ionizing electrons from a Sr-90 source with 5 to 12 micron thick n-i-p and p-i-n diodes. We measured W ( average energy to produce one electron-hole pair) using 17keV filtered xray pulses with a result W = 6.0 /+-/ 0.2eV. This is consistent with the expected value for a semiconductor with band gap of 1.7 to 1.9eV. With heavily ionizing particles such as 6 MeV alphas and 1 to 2 MeV protons, there was some loss of signal due to recombination in the particle track. The minimum ionizing electrons showed no sign of recombination. Applications to pixel and strip detectors for physics experiments and medical imaging will be discussed. 7 refs., 8 figs