Improved proportional counters for practical applications

Conference · Wed Feb 01 04:00:00 EST 1984 · IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.; (United States)

OSTI ID:6853479

Jarvinen, M L; Sipila, H

Gas filled proportional counters are useful room-temperature X-ray detectors in various gauges and spectrometers. New gas mixtures have made it possible to improve the properties of these detectors. Penning mixtures offer some special advantages. These mixtures are formed when parent gas is diluted with a small amount of impurity whose ionization energy is lower than the lowest excited state of the parent atoms. The excitations of these atoms can subsequently be turned into ionizations. The result of this additional ionization is that the average ionization energy of the mixture falls below that of the pure gases. This also improves the energy resolution of the detector. Another feature of Penning mixtures is the fact that the first Townsend ionization coefficient is high. This in turn is reflected by an unusually low anode voltage required by the detector. This makes it possible to use high filling pressures and to realize the advantages such pressures offer: the achievement of good energy resolution with a commercial low noise preamplifier; a decrease in the background caused by the wall effect because of the subsequently shorter photoelectron traces; and an increase in the efficiency of the detector. The type of detector used in this paper is a sealed side window counter. Some of its properties, when filled with the mixtures Ar-C/sub 4/H/sub 10/, Ar-Xe, and Ne-Ar, are presented.

• Research Organization: Outokumpu Oy, Inst. of Physics, Espoo
• OSTI ID: 6853479
• Report Number(s): CONF-831015-
• Conference Information: Journal Name: IEEE Trans. Nucl. Sci.; (United States) Journal Volume: 31:1
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

440101 -- Radiation Instrumentation-- General Detectors or Monitors & Radiometric Instruments
440103* -- Radiation Instrumentation-- Nuclear Spectroscopic Instrumentation
46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
ANODES
ARGON
COUNTING TECHNIQUES
DETECTION
DISPERSIONS
EFFICIENCY
ELECTRIC DISCHARGES
ELECTRIC POTENTIAL
ELECTRODES
ELEMENTS
ENERGY RESOLUTION
ENERGY-LEVEL TRANSITIONS
EXCITATION
FLUIDS
GASES
IMPURITIES
INHIBITION
IONIZATION
IONIZATION POTENTIAL
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS
MIXTURES
NONMETALS
OPTIMIZATION
PHOTOELECTRON COUNTING
PROPORTIONAL COUNTERS
RADIATION DETECTION
RADIATION DETECTORS
RARE GASES
RESOLUTION
SPECTROMETERS
TOWNSEND DISCHARGE
WALL EFFECTS
X-RAY DETECTION
X-RAY SPECTROMETERS
XENON