Development of large-area glass GEM

We have developed a new gaseous radiation detector, referred to as the Glass GEM (G-GEM). The G-GEM is composed of a photosensitive etching glass (PEG3) substrate from HOYA Corporation, Japan. Since a large-area detector is required for imaging device applications, we newly developed a large-area G-GEM prototype with a sensitive area of 280×280 mm2. In this study, we investigated its basic characteristics and confirmed that it worked properly and had sufficient uniformity across the entire sensitive area. It had high gas gain of up to approximately 7700, along with good energy resolution of 26.2% (FWHM) for a 5.9-keV X-ray with a gas mixture of Ar (90%) and CH4 (10%). The gain variation across the sensitive area was almost within the range of ±10%.