  Extremely radiation hard sensors are needed in particle physics experiments
to instrument the region near the beam pipe. Examples are beam halo and beam
loss monitors at the Large Hadron Collider, FLASH or XFEL. Currently artificial
diamond sensors are widely used. In this paper single crystal sapphire sensors
are considered as a promising alternative. Industrially grown sapphire wafers
are available in large sizes, are of low cost and, like diamond sensors, can be
operated without cooling. Here we present results of an irradiation study done
with sapphire sensors in a high intensity low energy electron beam. Then, a
multichannel direction-sensitive sapphire detector stack is described. It
comprises 8 sapphire plates of 1 cm^2 size and 525 micro m thickness,
metallized on both sides, and apposed to form a stack. Each second metal layer
is supplied with a bias voltage, and the layers in between are connected to
charge-sensitive preamplifiers. The performance of the detector was studied in
a 5 GeV electron beam. The charge collection efficiency measured as a function
of the bias voltage rises with the voltage, reaching about 10 % at 950 V. The
signal size obtained from electrons crossing the stack at this voltage is about
22000 e, where e is the unit charge.
  The signal size is measured as a function of the hit position, showing
variations of up to 20 % in the direction perpendicular to the beam and to the
electric field. The measurement of the signal size as a function of the
coordinate parallel to the electric field confirms the prediction that mainly
electrons contribute to the signal. Also evidence for the presence of a
polarisation field was observed.
