  The plasma panel sensor (PPS) is a gaseous micropattern radiation detector
under current development. It has many operational and fabrication principles
common to plasma display panels. It comprises a dense matrix of small, gas
plasma discharge cells within a hermetically sealed panel. As in plasma display
panels, it uses nonreactive, intrinsically radiation-hard materials such as
glass substrates, refractory metal electrodes, and mostly inert gas mixtures.
We are developing these devices primarily as thin, low-mass detectors with gas
gaps from a few hundred microns to a few millimeters. The PPS is a high gain,
inherently digital device with the potential for fast response times, fine
position resolution (<50-mm RMS) and low cost. In this paper, we report on
prototype PPS experimental results in detecting betas, protons, and cosmic
muons, and we extrapolate on the PPS potential for applications including the
detection of alphas, heavy ions at low-to-medium energy, thermal neutrons, and
X-rays.
