Progress in the development of photosensitive GEMs with resistive electrodes manufactured by a screen printing technology

An innovative photosensitive gaseous detector, consisting of a GEM-like amplification structure with double-layered electrodes (instead of commonly used metallic ones) coated with a CsI reflective photocathode, is described. In one of our latest designs, the inner electrode consists of a metallic grid and the outer one is made of resistive strips; the latter are manufactured by a screen-printing technology on the top of the metallic strips's grid The inner metallic grid is used for 2-D position measurements whereas the resistive layer provides an efficient spark-protected operation at high gains close to the breakdown limit. Detectors with active areas of 10×10 and 10×20 cm2 were tested under various conditions including the operation in photosensitive gas mixtures containing ethylferrocene or TMAE vapors. The new technique could have many applications requiring robust and reliable large-area detectors for UV visualization, as for example, in Cherenkov imaging devices.