Some characteristics of powder silica counters

Following the original idea of Peters, techniques have been developed to fabricate large area powder silica counters with refractive index between 1.06 to 1.12 in thicknesses of 1 cm and 2 cm respectively. The maximum size counter is 25 cm x 25 cm but the technique can be easily extended to 40 cm x 30 cm counters. Techniques have also been developed to dope this counter with the wavelength shifter p-terphenyl uniformly. The results of test runs at the Brookhaven National Laboratory and of laboratory runs using a superconducting magnet spectrometer on their performance are reported.