Cerium doped silica scintillating fiber sensor for γ radiation measurement

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Remote optical fiber sensors for radiation measurement are very useful in high radiation fields. In this paper, we fabricated scintillating optical fiber by using a cerium-doped silica rod. In the drawing process, we obtained different fiber samples by changing the drawing temperature and speed. The drawing temperature is from 1900 to 2200 °C and the speed is from 1 to 10 m/min. The experimental results showed that the optical rod physical properties such as viscosity, tension and scintillating efficiency can be controlled by the parameters of temperature and speed. The optical properties and chemical composition of the scintillating optical fiber have been analyzed by Raman spectra and X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (XRF-1800, SHIMADZU). The concentration of the doped cerium is 0.55%. Moreover, a test system is proposed to measure the scintillating performance of the fabricated optical fibers. For the scintillating properties, the effect of fiber length, the number of fiber bundle and the detection angle were analyzed. Experimental results showed that the optimal length of the cerium doped fiber is ~15 cm. The scintillating light intensity increases linearly with the number of the fiber bundle. With two low intensity ⁶⁰Co (0.2784 μCi) and ¹³⁷Cs (1.0865 μCi) gamma radiation sources, the scintillating light can be detected the gamma sources by using the scintillating fiber sensor which is connected a MMF.