Pion irradiation studies of CVD diamond detectors

We report here the results of a test to ascertain the radiation hardness properties of CVD diamond detectors to 300 MeV/c pions. In this test, CVD diamond detectors were exposed to 8 \times 10^{13} pions per cm^2 using the high intensity pion beam at the Paul Scherrer Institut. For comparison, silicon photodiodes were exposed to similar fluences at the same time. The measurements and the dosimetry during the irradiations are described herein. As expected, the silicon devices degraded. The diamond devices showed no degradation in collected charge and no increase in leakage current