Scintillators secondary

The solvent used is usually an aromatic hydrocarbon (toluene or xylene are most common), or sometimes dioxan. The scintillator is a polyaromatic fluorophore, such as 295-Diphenyloxazole (PPO). In the past it has sometimes been necessary to add a secondary scintillator to which the energy is transferred from the primary scintillator. Secondary scintillators, of which 2,2 -(l,4-Phenylene)bis-[5-phenyloxazole] (POPOP) is the most well known, are somewhat larger molecules, with more delocalisation than the primary scintillators they emit at longer wavelengths at which photomultiplier tube sensitivity is greater. 

An incident ion beam causes secondary electrons to be emitted which are accelerated onto a scintillator (compare this with the operation of a TV screen). The photons that are emitted (like the light from a TV screen) are detected not by eye but with a highly sensitive photon detector (photon multiplier), which converts the photon energy into an electric current. 

An ion beam causes secondary electrons to be ejected from a metal surface. These secondaries can be measured as an electric current directly through a Faraday cup or indirectly after amplification, as with an electron multiplier or a scintillation device. These ion collectors are located at a fixed point in a mass spectrometer, and all ions are focused on that point — hence the name, point ion collector. In all cases, the resultant flow of an electric current is used to drive some form of recorder or is passed to an information storage device (data system). 

The addition of a secondary solute or wavelength shifter can serve to offset much if not all of the action of tagged nitrocompds in reducing counting efficiency. For expl nitrocompds, a shift of the emission spectrum considerably into the visible region where absorption effects are not so pronounced is clearly indicated. The secondary solute POPOP has been found to be most efficient for this purpose (Ref 2). This enhanced effect on the scintillation process is illustrated in Fig 2 for p-Nitrotoluene... 

The control of materials purity and of environmental conditions requires to implement physico-chemical analysis tools like ESC A, RBS, AUGER, SEM, XTM, SIMS or others. The principle of SIMS (Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy) is shown in Eig. 31 an ion gun projects common ions (like 0+, Ar+, Cs+, Ga+,. ..) onto the sample to analyze. In the same time a flood gun projects an electron beam on the sample to neutralize the clusters. The sample surface ejects electrons, which are detected with a scintillator, and secondary ions which are detected by mass spectrometry with a magnetic quadrupole. 

The secondary electrons emitted from the sample are attracted to the detector by the collector screen. Once near the detector, the secondary electrons are accelerated into the scintillator by a positive potential maintained on the scintillator. Visible light is produced by the reaction of the secondary electrons with the scintillator material. The emitted light is detected by a photomultiplier tube, which is optically coupled to the scintillator via a light pipe. The PMT signal is then transferred to the grid of a cathode ray tube (CRT). Data collection... 

Some substances, known as fluors or scintillants, respond to the ionizing effects of alpha and beta particles by emitting flashes of light (or scintillations). While they do not respond directly to gamma rays, they do respond to the secondary ionization effects that gamma rays produce and, as a result, provide a valuable detection system for all emissions. 

Figure 5.5 Scintillants. A range of organic scintiilants is available with different solubility and emission characteristics, Scintillant cocktails or mixtures contain a primary scin-tillant such as PPO and often contain a secondary scintillant which absorbs the radiation produced by the primary scintillant and re-emits it at a longer wavelength, e.g, POPOP,...

Secondary isotope effects are small. In fact, most of the secondary deuterium KIEs that have been reported are less than 20% and many of them are only a few per cent. In spite of the small size, the same techniques that are used for other kinetic measurements are usually satisfactory for measuring these KIEs. Both competitive methods where both isotopic compounds are present in the same reaction mixture (Westaway and Ali, 1979) and absolute rate measurements, i.e. the separate determination of the rate constant for the single isotopic species (Fang and Westaway, 1991), are employed (Parkin, 1991). Most competitive methods (Melander and Saunders, 1980e) utilize isotope ratio measurements based on mass spectrometry (Shine et al., 1984) or radioactivity measurements by liquid scintillation (Ando et al., 1984 Axelsson et al., 1991). However, some special methods, which are particularly useful for the accurate determination of secondary KIEs, have been developed. These newer methods, which are based on polarimetry, nmr spectroscopy, chromatographic isotopic separation and liquid scintillation, respectively, are described in this section. The accurate measurement of small heavy-atom KIEs is discussed in a recent review by Paneth (1992). 

If the light emitted during the decay of F"j is still of a wavelength too short for efficient measurement by a PMT, a secondary fluor, F2, that accepts energy from F j may be added to the scintillation system. Equations 6.13 and 6.14 outline the continued energy transfer process and fluorescence of F2. 

Color quenching is a problem if chemical substances that absorb photons from the secondary fluors are present in the scintillation mixture. Since the secondary fluors emit light in the visible region between 410 and 420 nm, colored substances may absorb the emitted light before it is detected by the photocells. Radioactive samples may be treated to remove colored impurities before mixing with the scintillation solvent. 

In this chapter we will consider the techniques developed to detect and quantitatively measure how much ionization and/or excitation is caused by different nuclear radiations. As all radiation creates ionization and/or excitation, we will separate the discussion of detection methods according to the general techniques used to collect and amplify the results of the interaction of the primary radiation with matter rather than by the type of radiation. These detection methods can be classified as (a) collection of the ionization produced in a gas or solid, (b) detection of secondary electronic excitation in a solid or liquid scintillator, or (c) detection of specific chemical changes induced in sensitive emulsions. 

When the energy of the charged particle beam is too large to easily stop the beam in a Faraday cup, the beam intensity is frequently monitored by a secondary ionization chamber. These ion chambers have thin entrance and exit windows and measure the differential energy loss when the beam traverses them. They must be calibrated to give absolute beam intensities. If the charged particle beam intensity is very low (<106 particles/s), then individual particles can be counted in a plastic scintillator detector mounted on a photomultiplier tube. 

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