Plasma sprayed alumina coatings for radiation detector development

Conventional design of radiation detectors uses sintered ceramic insulating modules. The major drawback of these ceramic components is their inherent brittleness. Ion chambers, in which these ceramic spacers are replaced by metallic components with plasma spray coated alumina, have been developed in our Research Centre. These components act as thin spacers that have good mechanical strength as well as high electrical insulation and replace alumina insulators with the same dimensions. As a result, the design of the beam loss monitor ion chamber for CAT could be simplified by coating the outer surface of the HT electrode with alumina. One of the chambers developed for isotope calibrator for brachytherapy gamma sources has its outer aluminium electrode (60 mm dia × 220 mm long) coated with 250 µ thick alumina (97%) + titania (3%). In view of potential applications in neutron-sensitive ion chambers used in reactor control instrumentation, studies were carried out on alumina 100 µ to 500 µ thick coatings on copper, aluminium and SS components. The electrical insulation varied from 10⁸ ohms to 10¹² ohms for coating thicknesses above 200 µ. The porosity in the coating resulted in some fall in electrical insulation due to moisture absorption. An improvement could be achieved by providing the ceramic surface with moisture-repellent silicone oil coating. Irradiation at Apsara reactor core location showed that the coating on aluminium was found to be unaffected after exposure to 10¹⁷ nvt fluence.