Negative ion drift is a technique to minimise diffusion in gaseous detectors by drifting negative ions in lieu of electrons. Electronegative gases are typically used as a method to form negative ions. However, these gases present technical challenges to achieve high gain, preventing widespread adoption. This work leverages an alternative electron attachment approach, Dissociative Electron Attachment, which may produce negative ions in situ from conventional molecular gas species. The method, demonstrated in this work using CF4, successfully converts the electron signal to negative ions. Our measurements provide new insights into the attachment and detachment processes within gaseous detectors.
McKie et al. (Wed,) studied this question.