Effect of target film materials on neutron yield of neutron tube with drive-in target

Abstract

The sealed neutron tube with drive-in target has good stability and long service lifetime. Alloying and overcoating a protective layer on target can effectively overcome the inherent defects of pure titanium target. The neutron yield of neutron tube hit by deuterium tritium mixed beam on pure titanium target was measured experimentally. The calculation value by SRIM is in good agreement with the existing experimental data, which verifies the reliability of the theoretical method. The neutron yields of neutron tube with scandium-titanium, molybdenum-titanium and niobium-titanium targets at different alloy ratios (0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.0) were calculated. At the same time, the protective overcoating of alloy target was considered, and the neutron yield of the alloy target was calculated. The results show that the scandium-titanium alloy with 7.5 nm Pd overcoating and 0.4 doping ratio is an appropriate target film material for the neutron tube with drive-in target.