A novel microchannel plate design: improving open area ratio and mitigating dark current with triangular glass fiber

Microchannel plates (MCPs), a critical glass-based functional material, are widely utilized in high-tech fields such as lowlight night vision, high-energy physics detectors, medical diagnostics, and mass spectrometry due to their superior signal amplification and high-resolution capabilities. The open area ratio (OAR), a key performance metric for MCPs, directly correlates with the proportion of the effective detection area to the total area, and improving the OAR remains a central challenge in performance optimization. Traditional channel designs often sacrifice structural integrity to increase the OAR, limiting their practical applications. In this paper, we propose an innovative design featuring a hexagonal outer and circular inner channel structure, which significantly enhances the channel packing coefficient (from approximately 0.907 to 1). Utilizing etching techniques, we successfully achieve an OAR exceeding 91%, reducing the risk of tip discharge while significantly improving the MCP’s detection efficiency and reliability. Furthermore, to address the issue of abnormal dark current caused by residuals from traditional etching methods, we introduce a novel fabrication method to produce triangular glass fibers and modified the hexagonal tube design to integrate these fibers which effectively reduces dark current. This research not only overcomes a key bottleneck in MCP design which significantly increases the OAR of MCP but also opens new avenues for developing specialized glass fibers, with promising applications across various industries.