Recent results on chemical-vapor-deposited diamond microstrip detectors

Diamond is a nearly ideal material for detecting ionizing radiation. Its outstanding radiation hardness, fast charge collection, and low leakage current allow a diamond detector to be used in high-radiation high-temperature and aggressive chemical environments. We report here the results of recent beam tests of chemical-vapor-deposited diamond microstrip detectors in a 100 GeV pion beam at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland. Using detectors with a 50 μm strip pitch and a 50% coverage, we achieved an average signal size of 4350 electrons with a signal-to-noise ratio of 30:1 and a spatial resolution of 14.3 μm.