The in-vessel silicon diode arrays that are used for soft x-ray detection in many tokamaks are sensitive to neutron damage, making them unsuitable for burning plasma devices such as SPARC. In such a device, the silicon diodes would need to be placed far from the plasma—limiting their field of view—or an alternative detector could be used. Here, we present the design of a camera containing an array of chemical vapor deposition single-crystal diamonds, which will be placed in the upper and lower port plugs of the SPARC tokamak with a large enough view of the poloidal cross section to enable tomographic inversion. The camera design presented here is optimized to provide a wide field of view of the poloidal cross section. Simulated plasma conditions are used to estimate the x-ray signal that this detector array will receive and to fine-tune the camera placement within the tokamak.

Diamond is a semiconductor with a large band gap (5.48 eV), high carrier mobility (the highest for holes), high electrical resistance and low capacitance. Thanks to its outstanding properties, diamond-based detectors offer several advantages, among others: high signal-to-noise ratio, fast response, intrinsic pulse-shape discrimination capabilities for distinguishing different types of radiation, as well as operation in pulse and current modes. The mentioned properties meet most of the demanding requests that a radiation detection material must fulfil. Diamond detectors are suited for detecting almost all types of ionizing radiation including X-ray and UV photons, resulting also in blindness to visible photons and are used in a wide range of applications including ones requiring the capability to withstand harsh environments. After reviewing the fundamental physical properties of synthetic single crystal diamond (SCD) grown by microwave plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (MWPECVD) technique and the basic principles of diamond-photon interactions and detection, the paper focuses on SCD detectors developed for X-ray and UV detection, discussing their configurations, construction techniques, advantages, and drawbacks. Applications ranging from X-ray detection around accelerators to UV detection for fusion plasmas are addressed, and future trends are highlighted too.

Ion beam therapy techniques have advanced significantly in the past two decades. However, the development of dosimetric verification methods has lagged. Traditional dosimetry, which offers a macroscopic view of the absorbed dose, fails to address the micrometric-scale stochastic effects crucial for understanding biological responses. To bridge this gap, microdosimeters are used to assess physical quantities correlated with radiation effects. This work reports on the design and testing of a novel detection system based on synthetic single crystal diamond. The system is capable of simultaneously performing dosimetric and microdosimetric characterizations of clinical ion beams. The detector incorporates two active components configured as diamond Schottky diodes, both integrated on a single crystal diamond substrate. In particular, one very small element (sensitive area 0.0078 mm2) was designed to evaluate microdosimetric metrics, while the other large one (sensitive area 4.2 mm2) was designed to measure the absorbed dose to water. Diamond detectors were characterized using the ion beam induced charge (IBIC) technique, employing a 1 MeV protons microbeam. The IBIC map of the diamond detector shows two distinct sensitive areas with quite uniform sensitivity, well contained within the metallic contact regions. Dedicated front-end electronic circuits were designed and implemented for both the dosimetric and microdosimetric signals. These circuits, along with the integrated diamond detector, were embedded in an aluminum waterproof housing to minimize electronic interference. This configuration enables a compact, portable setup compatible with water phantoms. Laboratory tests with alpha particles yielded promising results, demonstrating stable and reproducible responses with a good signal-to-noise ratio.

Recent advances in ion diagnostics for laser-induced plasma experiments have improved system design and data analysis. Measuring charged particle emissions from laser-irradiated targets provides valuable insights into laser–matter interactions. Among real-time diagnostics, Time-of-Flight (TOF) detectors are reliable systems for analyzing particle beam properties such as kinetic energy and shot-to-shot reproducibility. Diamond-based detectors are ideal for TOF measurements due to their fast response time, radiation hardness, and low leakage current. However, TOF detectors lack particle discrimination. To overcome this, a Multi Filter Diamond Array (MFDA) was developed using six nominally identical single crystal diamond detectors paired with aluminum foils of different thicknesses to exploit particle stopping power differences. The MFDA was tested at the Prague Asterix Laser System during an experimental campaign in the framework of the FUSION project, and data analysis was performed. A cross-validation with other diagnostics, including a Thomson Parabola Spectrometer and CR-39 detectors, is also presented.

Reliable discrimination of ion species is a fundamental challenge in laser--plasma experiments, where multiple ion populations are commonly accelerated simultaneously and accurate species identification is essential for beam characterization and data interpretation. Among the available diagnostic techniques, Time-of-Flight (TOF) detectors offer fast response, reliability and compatibility with high-repetition-rate experiments. However, their discrimination capability is often limited when different ion species produce overlapping TOF signals. In this work, we present a methodology for quantitative multi-species ion discrimination based on a stacked TOF detector configuration and a self-consistent reconstruction of the detector response. Starting from the measured TOF signal acquired by the first detector layer, ion energy spectra are reconstructed under different species hypotheses. These spectra are then propagated through the detector stack by accounting for the detector geometry, layer thicknesses and ion energy losses calculated from stopping-power data, generating the current signals expected in each detector layer. The discrimination capability arises from the fact that the same incident ion population evolves differently while traversing the detector stack according to its mass, energy and stopping behavior, producing characteristic signal distributions across successive detector layers. The measured signals are compared with the propagated hypotheses, and the ion composition is reconstructed through a constrained non-negative least-squares (NNLS) minimization, supporting both single-species and mixed-species solutions. The methodology is validated using simulated TOF signals generated from known ion energy spectra, allowing a quantitative assessment of the reconstruction accuracy before application to experimental measurements. The results show that stacked TOF detectors significantly enhance ion-species discrimination with respect to single-layer configurations by exploiting the complementary information provided by successive active layers. Although the present implementation is developed for stacked diamond detectors, the proposed methodology can be extended to stacked TOF systems employing different materials.