Application of alpha particle transport to the modelization of efficiency curves in proportional counters

Abstract

The dependence of efficiency of a gas-flow proportional counter with respect to the source thickness and α-particle energy was evaluated using the code SRIM. Results for the mass-efficiency curves were evaluated for 209Po and 241Am in a substrate of NaNO3. The results revealed good agreement with a linear and a hyperbolic dependence for low and high thickness sources, respectively. However, some deviations were found for very thin thicknesses, which can be explained by taking into account scattering effects. A function is proposed for predicting the dependence of efficiency with α-particle energy in the range from 4 to 8 MeV.

Alfonso Fernandez Timon

Associate Professor

Alfonso Fernández Timón is Associate Professor and one of the senior researchers of the Optimization Algorithms Research Group GRAFO at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. Previously he was a fellow of the Metrological Stations Network and of the Radiological Surveillance Plan of the CSN at the University of Extremadura. His research interests range from the application of metaheuristics to solve combinatorial optimization problems to nuclear radiation metrology.