Construction and Testing of Novel Designs of Resistive Plate Chambers

Resistive Plate Chambers (RPCs) exhibit a significant loss of efficiency for the detection of particles, when subjected to high particle fluxes. This rate limitation is related to the usually high resistivity of the resistive plates used in their construction. Here we report on the measurements of the performance of various different glass RPC designs featuring a different total resistance of the resistive plates.In parallel, a novel design of RPC, using only a single resistive plate, was developed and tested. Based on this design, large size prototype chambers were constructed and were tested with cosmic rays and in particle beams. The tests confirmed the viability of this new approach.