Liquid Scintillation Spectrometer TRIEL

Hardware

Liquid Scintillation Spectrometer TRIEL is a device for registration of pulses arising from the interaction of alpha and beta particles with a liquid scintillator. The amplitude of the detected pulses is proportional to the energy of the particles that caused them, the pulse count rate is proportional to the activity of the measured counting sample.

The spectrometer consists of a light collection chamber with two PMT operating in the coincidence circuit and an electronic tract, including a high-voltage unit, a preamplifier, an amplifier, a multi-channel analyser, which measures the amplitudes of the pulse signals from the PMT and registers the received digital code in the buffer memory and further transfers information to the computer via USB or RS-485 interface.

The principle of operation of the spectrometer is based on the complete absorption of the energy of charged particles in a liquid scintillator, the emission of this energy in the form of a light flash, the conversion of the flash energy into an electrical pulse and the registration of these pulses using two PMTs. The analog signals from each PMT after amplification and formation go to the coincidence circuit for selection during the resolving time. The signal from the output of the coincidence system goes to the input of the MCA in which it is converted into a digital code proportional to the absorbed energy. The resulting codes are accumulated in the computer’s memory and form a spectrum of radiation energies.

The software allows you to control the operation of the spectrometer, process the spectra, and also identify radionuclides and calculate the activity in the counting samples. The processed results and spectra can be stored as files on computer storage devices or presented as reports.

To solve some radiochemical tasks of identifying and measuring the activity of radionuclides in samples it is possible to use measurement methods that should take into account the level of conformity of the counting and reference samples, the output coefficients during radiochemical concentration, and other relevant additional contributions to the error in determining the activities of radionuclides.

Software

The spectrometer is controlled by the “ASW3L” software, which provides control of the equipment using communication protocols, as well as display of the energy distribution (spectra), calculation and display of activity, saving and recording the results.

To solve the tasks of calculating activity in samples by decomposing complex spectra, as well as implementing analysis in accordance with additional measurement methods, the “SpectraDec” software is used.