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Abstract This report mainly focuses on the experiment of measuring and understanding Gamma-ray interactions with matter through studying some of the general features of its spectroscopy, along with the performance characteristics of a Ge semi-conductor detection system. In addition, it gives a general description for the energy calibration at the beginning of this experiment to be more precise of the measurements. Also, the attenuation coefficients of Gamma-ray absorbed by a material as a function of thicknesses are shown . Moreover, the investigation of transmitted Gamma-ray passing through the medium to the detector as an energy resolution when varying bias voltage and an intrinsic efficiency of Ge detector for variety radioactive sources are included, discussed and shown in this report. Most of the previous points are provided by some graphs, tables and equations to show the reader the exact work. Furthermore, the basic characteristics of the used equipments are covered briefly to be understood clearly. Finally, most of the results are compared with the theoretical parts of the experiment and with other works to get a clear idea about the similarities and the differences of the work.

Introduction: High energy photons are one of the three main types of ionising radiation resulting from natural radioactivity (Encyclopaedia, 2008). They are an energetic form of electromagnetic radiation and occur in the form of gamma or X-rays. The distinction between them is based on their origin, where a gamma-ray is emitted from an excited nucleus and X-ray is emitted during atomic processes involving energetic electrons. Since both are processes widely used in industry and medicine, it is necessary to identify the major characteristics of various

2 radioactive sources. This can be achieved by spectroscopy. A spectrometer is a tool to provide information about the energy and intensity of the radiation emitted from a source. In the case of gamma-ray detection, all or part of the original photon energy is transferred to an electron in the detector material producing a spectrum helping to understand the basic of photon interaction mechanisms as well as the characteristics of the detector material. (Knoll, 1999) Theory: For gamma-ray interactions with a matter, there are primarily three processes that could happen depending on the energy of these photons (Krane, 1987) (Knoll, 1999). First of them is called photoelectrical absorption, which happens when an incident photon (has an energy 200 keV

experimentally) is absorbed by a material then one of the electrons gets a sufficient energy then releasing from the atom, this called a photoelectron. This photoelectron process leads to the ionization in this atom (all the energy of the incident photon is deposited in the detector in this case). (Krane, 1987) (Knoll, 1999), (Advameg, 2010).

Photoelectrical effect explanation

When the incident photon faces an outer shell electron in an atom, there is a high probability for Compton scattering to occur in a wide range of mid energy (Compton scatter becomes the dominant process as PE decreases with energy). In this case, the energy after this interaction is shared between the recoil electron and the scattered photon. Also this energy (after interaction) depends on the angle of incidence according to the conversion laws and Compton derivation in

3 1923 (there is a partial deposition of the initial energy in the detector). (Knoll, 1999) (Krane, 1987)

Compton scattering diagram (Lindsey, 1999)

The third type of these interactions which obviously occurs when the photon has a high energy ( approximately1.022 MeV and above), is known as a pair production (electron and positron) where, the incident photon annihilates in the electric field around the nucleus and transforms to be a pair product (electron+ positron). The result of this interaction, electron and positron are going to interact with matter by Coulomb interaction, but as the positron slows down( due to the attraction of the different charges), it will annihilate with an electron to produce two backto-back photons each with energy 0.511MeV. (Krane, 1987) (Knoll, 1999)

Pair production diagram (Grossweiner, 2001) The various processes lead to a complete or a partial transfer of the initial photon energy to the electron within the detector material. The experiment parts were provided by a series of

4 gamma-ray sources, a Ge detector and a multi-channel analyser (MCA). These enabled the identification of major characteristics of some typical gamma-ray spectra and the calculation of some of the main properties characterising the performance of a spectroscopy system.

A graph of gamma ray interactions

Description of the experiment components When using semi-conductor(solid state) detectors, The incident radiation leads to the ionization of the atoms of the materials used in these detectors resulting the electron-hole pairs. The electrons are transferred from the valence band to the conduction band, and the same number of holes are created in the valence band. Under applying of an electric field, electrons and holes(opposite direction) travel to the electrodes, where they can create pulses that can be measured by a circuit. The energy required to produce electron-hole pairs is very low compared to the energy required for paired ions in a gas detector. Consequently, in semiconductor detectors the statistical variation of the pulse height is smaller and the energy resolution is higher. As the electrons travel fast, the time resolution is also very good, and is dependent upon rise time.

5 Preamplifiers and amplifiers work to amplify the electric signals from the photomultiplier tubes. The preamplifier prepares the electric signal for further amplification by providing a voltage gain. Amplifiers provide the current gain to increase the amplitude of the electric signal. A multi channel analyzer (MCA) is a device that scans a stream of high voltage pulses and organizes them into a spectrum. Ortec (2010) It has an internal high-voltage power supply to ensure a stable gain at high count rates and reduce power consumption. AMP TEK (2010).

Source

Detector

Preamplifier Power supply

Amplifier

Multichannel analyzer

Computer A diagram on experiment connection (used equipments).

The calibration: The first part of the experiment is called the calibration, The essence of doing that was to improve the accuracy of the system and to determine the relationship between energy and channel number. To do the calibration, some steps should be followed as: First, the equipments were connected as shown previously. Second, the power supply was set at a voltage (2.5 KeV) to measure (133Ba, 60Co, 241Am, 137Cs and 152Eu). Thirdly, these radioactive sources were put in front of the detector to be measured for a period of 5 minutes for all of them individually. Finally, after getting the spectrums for all these sources, the real values of energy for them were typed into MCA and the linear relationship between the energies and the channels number for them was drown followed by finding the equation below. (See fig1). Note: this calibration is valid also to examine the unknown sources as long as the conditions of this calibration are maintained and not changed that by using this equation.

Sourc e 60 Co
137

Chann el
3449 3916 1948 184 246 819.5 897 1053 366 726.6 1019 1213 1310 2293 2552 2836 3193 3270 4138

Energy(K eV)

Cs Am 133 Ba
241

152

Eu

1173.3 1332.5 661.6 59.5 81 303 356 383.8 121.8 244.7 344 411 444 779 867 964 1086 1112 1408

7 Figure 1: A graph of energy against channel number The attenuation: When gamma-ray is collimated into a narrow beam (I and allowed to be detected ) after passing shielding at different thicknesses and matters (I), these photons have no interactions at all whereas the other scatter away from the detector direction. The .outputs of these interactions should be an exponential attenuation function
The linear attenuation coefficient provides an indication of how effective a given material is, per unit thickness, in promoting photon interactions. The larger the value of the attenuation coefficient, the more likely it is that photons of a given energy will interact in a given thickness of material. The magnitude of the coefficient varies with material and with photon energy. The probability of interaction is the total of the three types of gamma-rays

:interactions ( = (photoelectric) + (Compton) + (pair) (1

Also, when including the density of the absorber, that gives the Mass Attenuation
(Coefficient( MAC) : MAC=/ (3

Where I, I are the initial intensity of photons and the intensity of photons after passing .through matter respectively is the linear attenuation coefficient and it describes the fraction of beam absorbed or .(scattered per unit thickness (cm-1

8 .t is the thickness in cm .( is the density of Aluminium (2.8 g/cm3 To do this part of the experiment, a source was put (137Cs) in front of the detector with .(no shield, then its measurement was taken for 5 minutes (300sec The measurement was repeated more than once with putting shields at different .thickness (i.e. Al) between the source and the detector :Note The voltage and the distance between the source - the detector were constants in this part of the experiment. After applying this work with 137Cs, the results of that are shown :below Thickness (cm) 0 0.416 0.835 1.26 I/I 85 78.5 74.7 69.4 Ln(I/I ) 4.5 4.4 4.3 4.2

Figure2: A thickness against ln(I/I). Table: experimental data The graph above explains the relationship between thickness(cm) and ln( I/I), and it can be seen clearly, the increasing in the thickness leads to the decreasing in the ratio of ln( I/I) as equation 2 says,

whereas the minus sign means that the intensity (I) is reduced by the absorber (shields). Also the MAC value for Aluminium is around 5.76E-2 compared with NIST value which is about 7.802E-02.

The energy resolution: The energy resolution is considered one of the most important features of checking the detector properties from noting the response of the radiation spectroscopy. The energy resolution of the

9 detector is the measuring of its ability to resolve small differences or overlapping in the energies shown as peaks of incident photons and it is defined as the differential pulse height distribution for a hypothetical detector under the same assumption for a single energy being recorded (Knoll,1999) The full energy peak for any type of detector can be approximated as a Gaussian curve, where the main contributor to peak broadening is statistical fluctuations in the number of charge carriers produced in the detector for a given deposition energy. See equation 3: ER= FWHM/H Where FWHM is the full width at half maximum and it is known as the width of the distribution at half the level of the peak. H is the peak centroid channel number. A small value for resolution means that the detector has more ability to identify two energy peaks being close to each other, whereas the detector with a large resolution value produces one peak for two energies. This part was done as below:
137

(4)

Cs was chosen to be the source, and the measurements was taken at a constant time (5

minutes) with different voltages (0.5, 0.1, 1.5,2 and 2.5 KV). After finishing the measurements, peak fit program was used to find FWHM & H then using equation 4 to calculate the resolution. The graph below shows the resolution for 137Cs (662 KeV).

Voltage(KV ) 0.5 0.1 1.5 2 2.5

Chann el 1949.3 1949.4 1949.2 1897 1686

Energy resolutio n 2.4E-3 2.4E-3 2.4E-3 4E-3 1.2E-2

Error in Ene.re s 5.23E6 5.2E-6 4.1E-6 1.01E5 5.8E-5

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Figure 3: experimental data table

A graph of ER against V

For the Semi-conductor detectors, the increasing in the voltage affects the energy resolution which could be considered as an inverse correlation. Also the values of the energy resolution is around and less than 1% (it can be seen from the table above) whereas the scintillation detectors have between 5%-10% of the resolution expecting in theory.

:The efficiency The radiation of gamma-ray has significant interactions before being detected in the detector due to its uncharged radiation and thus, it travels a large distance between interactions leading to less than 100% efficient. The efficiency is divided into two parts, first of them is called the absolute efficiency, meaning the number of photons recorded over the number of them emitted by sources.

abs= no. of recorded pulses/ no. of emitted photons by a source

(5)

While the second part is known as the intrinsic efficiency, which means the number of photons recorded divided by the number of them passed to a detector.

int= no. of recorded pulses/no. of incident on a detector

(6)

11 All these types of efficiencies depend on the distance from the detector whereas the intrinsic one depends on the geometry of the detector. Some measurements were done by variable equations before calculating the efficiency for the sources as shown below: =2 (1-(d/ (7)

To find the solid angle of the detector where as a is the radius of the detector (cm). d is the distance between the detector and the source (cm). Also, due to the long time of producing these sources, their activities now have changed which has been solved by using: A=A (8)

Where A is the current activity (Becquerel). A is the activity when producing (Becquerel). is the radioactive decay constant per unit time = (ln2/half life). t is the time since the producing until now.(years, months ..etc) After getting A, it should be multiplied by I (the ratio of decay %). The experiment was done by finding the spectrums of these sources (133Ba, 60Co, 241Am and
137

Cs), then the area of the peaks was divided by the time of measuring (300 sec) to know about

the exact number of photons detected by the detector in second. The rest of the work was calculations to find the efficiencies by using equation 5 for all the sources then resulted the following:

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Source s
133

Energy (KeV) 80.9971 276.399 7 302.851 356.013 4 383.848 1173.22 8 1332.49 661.657 59.54

Efficiency % 0.106479 0.06518 0.06108 0.05047 0.047255 0.01169 0.01136 0.02591 0.04417

Ba

60

Co Cs Am

137

241

A graph of efficiency against energy

Figure 4: experimental data table

13 From the graph, it can be seen clearly the energy of 241Am is out of the curve since it is absorbed by the photoelectrical effect (at low energy as mentioned in the introduction). Moreover, the efficiency values for all the sources are less than 100%, which is expected theoretically.

Conclusion: This experiment has illustrated the three types of gamma-rays interactions with matters as well and explained how that depends on the energy of incident photons. It has determined some of the performance characteristics of the Ge detection system with showing the mechanism of the detection. Additionally, the calibration of the energy has been included and the way of doing that with the linear relationship between the channel number and the energy have been involved as well. The inverse relationship between attenuation coefficient of the Aluminium shields and the thickness has been demonstrated clearly. As a part of the detection system, the resolution of the semi-conductor detector has been studied and compared with the scintillation system briefly. Finally, the intrinsic efficiencies of the detector for a series of gamma-rays sources have been calculated and also compared with the efficiency of the scintillation system.

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15 http://www.student.nada.kth.se/~f93-jhu/phys_sim/compton/Compton.htm (Accessed 30 November 2011). Wang, H. W., 2003. The Operational Characteristics of a Sodium Iodide Scintillation Counting System as a Single-Channel Analyzer. Radiation Protection Management, 20 (10)