A STUDY OF ALPHA PARTICLE SPECTROSCOPY USING SOLID STATE DETECTORS

Abstract

The application of the solid state nuclear track detectors (SSNTDs) has been widely increased in fields of radiation dosimetry and particle identification because they possess many advantages over the others. The study of a detector response requires the knowledge of the exact values of energy and incident angles of radiation. Such requirements is very important in designing and constructing an irradiation chamber which is the main task of this work.

The constructed irradiation chamber consists of (a) a rotating table•carrying six plastic holders. The rotation of this table is controlled electronically via a stepper motor with a precision of 1.8 degree. The beam-to-detector direction could be adjusted with accuracy less than 5.0 degrees. (b) An alpha source which is moved vertically using another stepper motor. The source-to-detector distance is determined with an accuracy better than 1.0 mm. (c) An energy monitoring system, composed of a silicon surface barrier detector and signal electronic system attached to PC computer, is used for energy calibration.