Radiation Physics and Chemistry 81 (2012) 911

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Radiation Physics and Chemistry

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/radphyschem

An empirical formula for HPGe g detector efciency calibration for bulky sources
Nie Peng n, Ni Bang-fa, Tian Wei-zhi
Department of Nuclear Physics, China Institute of Atomic Energy, P.O. Box 275-50, Beijing 102413, China

a r t i c l e i n f o
Article history: Received 10 June 2010 Accepted 29 August 2011 Available online 16 September 2011 Keywords:: HPGe g detector Bulky sources Efciency calibration Empirical formula

abstract
In this paper, an empirical formula for the HPGe efciency calibration of bulky sources in cylindrical geometry is proposed. The simple but accurate empirical formula is able to effectively predict the efciencies of summing effect-free g-rays from cylindrical bulky sources (within |30 mm 40 mm) at different source-to-detector distances. The relative difference between experimental and calculated data at 0, 20, 40 and 80 mm source-to-detector distances is smaller than 5%. & 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction There are two general methods for the calculation of gammaray efciencies for bulky sources, the integration of the efciencies of equivalent point sources, and the use of standard sources with composition, density and geometry very close to those of the source of interest. The rst method is quite complicated and subjected to errors from self-absorption. For the second method, the preparation of standard bulky sources with given composition, density and geometry is time-consuming, (Abbas et al., 2006). In this paper, an empirical formula for HPGe g efciency calibration for bulky sources is derived, based on a modied expression for point sources. The empirical formula is based on the physics involved in the interactions between g-rays and materials in both the source and the detector, taking considerations of sourcedetector geometry. The proposed formula has been veried by comparing the experimental and calculated data of the full energy peak efciencies for aqueous solution bulky sources emitting cascade-free g rays, i.e., 141Ce(145.4 keV), 51 Cr(320.8 keV), 198Au(411 keV), and 65Zn(1115.5 keV).

extension of the HPGe detector axial is given in the following equation:   2 2 H 1 l aebS S0 H=2 =S0 lnpR2 HR0 2 S S0 2 where

epoint ebulky

where epoint is the peak efciency of a point source at the center of the detector surface and ebulky is the peak efciency of a cylindrical source. The term ebS S0 H=2=S0 is a self-absorption factor of cylinder source, with S, S0 and H being the distance between the surface of the detector and the bottom of the source, effective interaction depth (EID), (Tian Weizhi et al., 1992) and the height of the source, respectively, b is a parameter to be determined. The term ln(pR2H) is volume factor of the cylindrical source with R being the radius of the source. The term R2 S S0 H=2 is the effective geometry factor of the detector 0 with R0 being the radius of the detector.

2. Formula description The source-detector geometry for bulky source efciency calculation is shown in Fig. 1 (Alfassia and Groppib 2007). The proposed efciency formula for a cylindrical source at the
n

3. Experiment verication of the formula A coaxial HPGe detector (47%, 1.85 keV, ORTEC) was used. Bulky sources of 141Ce, 51Cr, 198Au and 65Zn in water solution were prepared in cylindrical geometries of |30 mm 10, 20, 30 and 40 mm, respectively, and measured at source-to-detector distances of 10, 20, 30 and 40 cm for the counting rates of their respective full-energy peaks, i.e., 145.4, 320.8, 411.0 and 1115.5 keV.

Corresponding author. Tel.: 861069357571; fax: 861069357800. E-mail address: liuynie360@hotmail.com (N. Peng).

0969-806X/$ - see front matter & 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.radphyschem.2011.08.014

logS0 E 0:1782lg E 1:0912lg E0:0789 3

The EID values (S0 in Eq. (1)) measured with a 152Eu quasipoint source at summing effect-free counting positions are shown in Table 1. The S0 (E) function was obtained by least square tting and given in the equation.
10 20 30 40 10 20 30 40 10 20 30 40 10 20 30 40
a b c

10

Fig. 1. Geometry of bulky source and HPGe g detector.

Fig. 2. Value a vs. source-to-detector distance, S (mm).

Fig. 3. Value b vs. the height of the sources, H (mm).

Table 1 Effective interaction depth for quasi-point sources.

121.8 244.8 344.5 411.4 444 779 1112.7 1408

E (keV)

Table 2 Comparison between measured and calculated relative efciency l (epoint/ebulky)a for different Hb, Sc and Egd. Eg (keV) H/mm Measured 0 mm 145.4 145.4 145.4 145.4 320.8 320.8 320.8 320.8 411.0 411.0 411.0 411.0 1115.5 1115.5 1115.5 1115.5 1.043 1.235 1.503 1.726 1.053 1.167 1.382 1.397 1.118 1.317 1.455 1.636 1.132 1.288 1.482 1.645 20 mm 2.138 2.402 2.816 3.305 2.202 2.577 2.925 3.355 2.567 3.051 3.011 3.592 2.205 2.568 3.198 3.792 40 mm 3.988 4.443 5.131 5.892 4.223 4.538 4.946 5.522 4.551 5.198 5.336 5.917 3.781 4.355 5.520 6.611 80 mm 10.11 11.75 12.11 12.85 10.27 11.13 12.46 13.31 10.37 11.53 12.33 13.99 8.147 8.958 12.34 14.24 Calculated 0 mm 1.062 1.284 1.483 1.750 1.063 1.183 1.427 1.342 1.109 1.366 1.430 1.621 1.179 1.241 1.426 1.633 20 mm 2.076 2.437 2.857 3.348 2.213 2.518 2.855 3.288 2.462 3.137 2.991 3.460 2.108 2.664 3.256 3.695 40 mm 3.798 4.451 5.140 5.903 4.128 4.434 4.887 5.637 4.657 5.167 5.293 5.882 3.626 4.182 5.610 6.405 80 mm 10.56 11.25 12.31 12.98 10.42 11.44 12.32 12.98 10.65 12.02 12.16 13.80 8.178 8.682 12.73 13.59 Deviations % 0 mm 1.82 3.97 1.33 1.39 0.950 1.37 3.256 3.937 0.805 3.721 1.718 0.9169 4.152 3.649 3.778 0.729 20 mm 2.90 1.46 1.47 1.30 0.500 2.29 3.42 2.00 4.09 2.82 0.664 3.67 4.39 3.74 1.81 2.56 40 mm 4.76 0.203 1.75 1.87 2.25 2.29 1.19 2.08 0.35 0.600 0.805 0.59 4.10 3.97 1.63 3.12 80 mm 4.45 4.26 1.65 1.01 1.46 2.79 1.13 2.48 2.70 4.25 1.38 1.36 0.381 3.08 3.16 4.56

N. Peng et al. / Radiation Physics and Chemistry 81 (2012) 911

26.3 32.7 34.8 36.1 36.7 38.0 38.8 39.5

S0 (mm)

epoint and ebulky stand for detection efciency of the HPGe detector to point and bulky g-ray sources, respectively.
51

H is the height of the cylindrical source. S is the source-to-detector distance. d The g-ray sources are 141Ce (145.4 keV),

Cr (320.8 keV),

198

Au (411.0 keV) and

65

Zn (1115.5 keV).

N. Peng et al. / Radiation Physics and Chemistry 81 (2012) 911

11

of different H and energies at S0, 20, 40 and 80 mm and percent uncertainties are presented.

4. Software implementation of the formula An executable le was made for calculating l with this formula. The complete interface is handiness and simplicity. The interface of the executable le contains some blank columns for inputting data. After all data are input, the relevant results can be obtained immediately by just pressing the submit key. Fig. 4 is an example of the interface for efciency calculation of bulky sources.

5. Conclusions
Fig. 4. An interface of efciency calculation for bulky sources.

In Eq. (1) the value of l can be determined by the measurement of the counting rates of full-energy peaks for a series of g ray energies in different source-to-detector distances for the point sources and bulky sources (Adesanmi, 2001). The parameters H, S, R, R0 and S0 in the Eq. (1) are known. The values a and b can be obtained by tting a set of measured values to Eq. (1). For a given detector and source material, a and b are functions of the source-to-detector distances, S, and the height of the bulky sources, H, respectively. The functions of a vs. S and b vs. H obtained by tting a series of a, b values for different S and H, respectively. Figs. 2 and 3 are curves of a vs. S and b vs. H, respectively. Eqs. (5) and (6) are tting functions of the above two curves: a f S 6:259 109 S4 1:309 106 S3 0:0001271S2 0:004504S 0:2691 b f H 7:763e12 H7 1:689e9 H6 1:489e7 H5 6:953e6 H4 0:0001876H3 0:002975H2 0:02673H 0:1921 5 In Table 2, the measured and the calculated of the efciencies (l epoint/ebulky) of HPGe to | 30 mm 10, 20, 30, 40 mm sources

An empirical formula is proposed for calculating full-energy efciencies of summing effect-free g rays from bulky sources. The formula has been veried by experimental measurements on a HPGe detector for different source-to-detector distances (0 80 mm) and water solution sources with heights o40 mm and diameterso 30 mm. The relative deviations are less than 5% between the measured and calculated values. Further development is planned to extend the application scope of the formula to wider range of size and medium of sources and g rays in cascade, (Abbas, 2001).

References
Adesanmi, C.A., 2001. A semi-empirical formula for HPGe detector efciency calibration. Radio. Anal. Nucl. Chemi. 249, 606611. Abbas, Mahmoud I., 2001. HPGe detector photopeak efciency calculation including self-absorption and coincidence corrections for cylindrical sources using compact analytical expressions. Radiat. Phys. Chem. 61, 429431. Abbas, Mahmoud I., Nafee, Sherif, Selim, Younis S., 2006. Calibration of cylindrical detectors using a simplied theoretical approach. Appl. Radiat. Isot. 64, 10571064. Tian Weizhi, Ni Bangfa, Wang Pingsheng, et al., 1992. Further study on parameterization of reactor NAA III parametric normalization for Ge detector full energy peak efciencies at different counting geometries. J. Nucl. Radiochem. 14, 6570. Alfassia, Z.B., Groppib, F., 2007. An empirical formula for the efciency detection of Ge detectors for cylindrical radioactive sources. Nucl. Instrum. Methods Phys. Res. Sect. B 574, 280284.