Cell micro-irradiation with MeV protons counted by an ultra-thin diamond membrane

Philippe Barberet (1) , Michal Pomorski (2) , Giovanna Muggiolu (1) , Eva Torfeh (1) , Gérard Claverie (1) , Cédric Huss (1) , Samuel Saada (2) , Guillaume Devès (1) , Marina Simon (1) , Hervé Seznec (1)

1 CENBG - Centre d'Etudes Nucléaires de Bordeaux Gradignan
2 LCD (CEA, LIST) - Laboratoire Capteurs Diamant (CEA, LIST)

We report the development of thin single crystal diamond membranes suitable for dose control in targeted cell irradiation experiments with a proton microbeam. A specific design was achieved to deliver single protons with a hit detection efficiency approaching 100%. The membranes have thicknesses between 1.8 and 3 pm and arc used as vacuum windows on the microbeam line. The impact of these transmission detectors on the microbeam spot size is estimated by Monte-Carlo simulations, indicating that a beam lateral resolution below 2 µm is achieved. This is confirmed by experiments showing the accumulation online of X-ray Repair Cross-Complementing protein 1 (XRCC1)-Green Fluorescent Protein (GFP) at DNA damaged sites in living cells.

Keywords: CHARGED-PARTICLE MICROBEAM; SINGLE; REPAIR; RECRUITMENT

Domains: Micro and nanotechnologies/Microelectronics; Instrumentation and Detectors [physics.ins-det]; Nuclear Experiment [nucl-ex]; Modeling and Simulation

Philippe Barberet, Michal Pomorski, Giovanna Muggiolu, Eva Torfeh, Gérard Claverie, et al.. Cell micro-irradiation with MeV protons counted by an ultra-thin diamond membrane. Applied Physics Letters, 2017, 111 (24), pp.243701. ⟨10.1063/1.5009713⟩. ⟨cea-01874782⟩