Characterization of diamond-like carbon (DLC) coatings at cryogenic temperatures (down to 77 K) is presented, covering the electrical resistivity range of practical interest to gaseous and liquid particle instrumentation: 10^-1-10^5 Mohm/sq. The good behaviour observed in terms of linearity, surface uniformity and stability with time and transported charge add to other well-known characteristics like low chemical reactivity and tolerance to radiation. The observed temperature dependence and stability of electrical properties with transported charge is consistent with a conductivity mechanism based on 2-dimensional variable-range electron hopping, as expected for the surface conductivity of thin films made from amorphous carbon. First results from a resistive-protected WELL detector ('RWELL') built with DLC and operated close to the liquid-vapor coexistence point of argon (87.5 K at 1 bar) are presented.
@article{arxiv.2209.15509,
title = {Diamond-like carbon coatings for cryogenic operation of particle detectors},
author = {Sara Leardini and Yi Zhou and Andrea Tesi and Miguel Morales and Diego González-Díaz and Amos Breskin and Shikma Bressler and Luca Moleri and Vladimir Peskov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.15509},
year = {2023}
}