Diamond and SiC Detectors for Rare Event Searches

Abstract

In recent years, there has been increasing interest in developing detectors which are sensitive to sub-GeV dark matter and low-energy events from coherent neutrino scattering. Due to carbon’s light atomic weight and its tendency to form crystals with high-energy, long-lived phonon modes, carbon-based crystals (including diamond and silicon carbide (SiC)) present themselves as natural target materials for scattering-based searches in this regime. We present our preliminary results in adapting our TES-based detectors to these substrates, specifically 4-H SiC and polycrystalline diamond. We focus on our fabrication efforts, specifically tuning the transition temperature (\(\text {T}_{\text {C}}\)) of tungsten films sputtered on these materials, as well as our advancement toward fabricating and testing devices on these substrates.