Gas Electron Multipliers: Development of large area GEMs and spherical GEMs

Gaseous radiation detectors have been a crucial part of high-energy physics instrumentation since the 1960s, when the first multiwire proportional counters were built. In the 1990s the first micropattern gas detectors (MPGDs) saw the light; with sub-millimeter feature sizes these novel detectors were faster and more accurate than their predecessors. The gas electron multiplier (GEM) is one of the most successful of these technologies. It is a charge multiplication structure made from a copper clad polymer foil, pierced with a regular and dense pattern of holes. I will describe the properties and the application of GEMs and GEM detectors, and the research and development I have done on this technology. Two of the main objectives were the development of large area GEMs (~m^2) for particle physics experiments and GEMs with a spherical shape for x-ray or neutron diffraction detectors. Both have been realized, and the new techniques involved are finding their way to applications in research and industry.