Study of the relationship between different intensity ratios and effective atomic number in diluted uranium samples

Abstract

In this work, the samples with the different effective atomic number between 10.536 and 66.177 were obtained by mixing urayl acetate ((CH3COO)2UO2⋅2H2O) and cellulose (C6H10O5) powders by matrix dilution method. The variation of different intensity ratios with effective atomic number was investigated according to the qualitative analyze and peak analyze process. The effective atomic numbers of samples were calculated theoretically by WinXCOM program. The samples were irradiated by 59.54 keV gamma rays emitted from an Am241 annular radioactive source. HPGe detector was used to detect the emitted (Mα1,2, Ll and Lα1,2 x-ray peaks) and scattered (coherent and Compton) photons. (Icoh+IComp)/μMα1,2, (Icoh+IComp)/μLl, (Icoh+IComp)/μLα1,2, IMα1,2/(Icoh+IComp), ILl/(Icoh+IComp), ILα1,2/(Icoh+IComp), IMα1,2/(μcoh+μComp),ILl/(μcoh+μComp) and ILα1,2/(μcoh+μComp) intensity ratios of the prepared samples were investigated in XRF spectrum. The results show that the investigated intensity ratios can be used in qualitative analysis for composite materials. Also, the reliable calibration curves are obtained for overlapping peak analyzes in EDXRF.