Revealing 226Ra Alpha Peak by a Multi-Pixel Photon Counter

Assist. Prof. Elif Ebru Ermiş

6Ra alpha peak was revealed by a Multi-Pixel Photon Counter (MPPC) through a developed spectrometer. MPPC is consisted of silicon photomultipliers (Si-PM) which can be used for photon detection and measurement. It is one of the new generation counter types. It has been used in many research areas such as radiation detection and optics. So, this type detector was chosen so that this study is up-to-date. Main goal of the study is to obtain pure alpha energy spectrum because no study was found in the literature about the neat alpha spectrum by the MPPC. For this reason, coincidence gate method was used in the presented study to acquire the spectrum. In the first section, alpha spectrum was recorded directly via MPPC module. This spectrum had too much electronic noise. The spectrum was secondly obtained through the developed spectrometer. This second spectrum had not almost all noise components. Then, the obtained spectra were compared with each other at the final section. The asserted spectrometer was highly successful in obtaining neat alpha spectrum by reducing the most noise components. It has been realized that the neat source spectra of other radioactive sources can be achieved by using this spectrometer with MPPC. Additionally, students who work about radiation detection can use the suggested spectrometer in their experiments.