Excitation and Detection of High Energy Characteristic X-rays (20-90 KeV) Using a Novel Radiometric Technique*

Abstract

Recently, we have developed a new radioisotope excited technique for x-ray fluorescence which employs “direct” beta particle excitation to produce characteristic x-rays for elemental analysis. We have also studied this technique with various other isotopes with different decay modes. But in all these previous works, we have only studied the x-ray energy region below the Bak lines (≤ 35 KeV), because of the poor efficiency of the Si(Li) semiconductor at higher energies.In this work we have employed a planar Ge detector, which has about a 100% efficiency in the range of about 20 to 100 KeV. We have also compared this detector with a HgI2 detector, even though its resolution and efficiency is far less than the planar Ge detector.