Radiation detectors are devices used to detect ionizing radiation. They can be manufactured from different materials for different purposes. Chemical vapour deposition (CVD) diamond detectors are semiconductor radiation detectors manufactured from artificial diamond grown using the CVD method. The physical properties of diamond make diamond detectors fast and radiation hard, and hence they are a favourable option for precise timing measurements in harsh radiation environments.
The work presented in this thesis was done as part of a detector upgrade project of the TOTEM experiment at the Large Hadron Collider of CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. The upgrade program includes the development and the building of a timing detector system based on CVD diamond in order to include the capability to perform precise timing measurements of forward protons.
A new I-V measurement setup was built for the purpose of quality assurance measurements of diamond crystals before their further processing to timing detectors. When the setup was operated, different problems were observed, including electrical discharging, instabilities of leakage currents and unexpectedly high leakage current levels. The undesired effects disappeared, when the electrical contact used for supplying bias voltage to the measured samples was modified. Results of both quality assurance and measurements for the setup development are presented.
