What Is A Scintillation Counter And How Does It Work?

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What Is A Scintillation Counter And How Does It Work?

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Which is better and more accurate, a Geiger Counter, or a Scintillator? 

Geiger counters are an indispensable tool for any scientist, professional or amateur (like me). The Geiger counter can detect radiation quickly and effectively. They are also relatively cheap, ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars (most are under $1,000). 

Geiger counters have varying abilities and detect different particles and energy levels of those particles with differing levels of efficiency. By far, beta radiation is detected the best with many tubes detecting 2 to 4 out of ten particles which hit them. 

Alpha radiation is a bit lower, with many tubes totally blind to them and those which are not only detecting 5 to 10 particles per every 100. Gamma and X-ray radiation is the lowest for Geiger counters, where often between 1 and 3 photons are detected per 100.

A pancake style Geiger Counter is more sensitive than a tube type. A small tube Geiger Counter is less sensitive than a Geiger Counter with one or even two large tubes. If your interest is in detecting radiation down to the level of food contamination, you must purchase a pancake style detector, because the tube types are just not sensitive enough to pick up anything. 

Pros -- Cheap, easy to use, portable, can detect alpha, beta, gamma, and x-ray. 

Cons -- Cannot determine isotope (fact), cannot determine energies, very low gamma and x-ray efficiency.

Scintillation counters are the tools of the professional nuclear scientist. Scintillation counters exist for gamma, x-ray, beta, and alpha radiation (a specific unit for each). When used with a multi channel spectrum analyzer, the counter can identify isotopes by their energies. 

Some Gamma spectrometers can even be used for complex gamma recoil analysis (mossbaur spectroscopy) which aid in determining the molecular bonds of various atoms, such as iron. 

Crystal scintillators may cost a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, while a multi channel spectrum analyzer to attach to one is at least a few thousand more. This means an entry level lab-grade unit (like mine) will set you back about $5000. 

Very powerful soil state units, like those used at universities, can be well beyond $10,000 and even as much as a million dollars. A good High Purity Germanium (HPGe) is at least $10k. These detectors may be used without a multi channel spectrum analyzer, but they only count at that point. Hobbyists have created multi channel spectrum analyzer's for under $1,000 dollars.

Pros -- Can identify isotopes, measures energies, very sensitive to gamma rays (for gamma sicntillators), can probe hyperfine molecular bonds.

Cons -- Expensive ($1000 and up), complex, requires extensive skill (physics), portable units are often very expensive. Thanks to http://Anti-Proton.com

Wikipedia; "A scintillation counter is an instrument for detecting and measuring ionizing radiation.
It consists of a scintillator which generates photons of light in response to incident radiation, a sensitivephotomultiplier tube which converts the light to an electrical signal, and the necessary electronics to process the photomultiplier tube output.
Scintillation counters are widely used because they can be made inexpensively yet with good quantum efficiency and can measure both the intensity and the energy of incident radiation.

Operation


animation of radiation scintillation counter
When a charged particle strikes the scintillator, its atoms are excited and photons are emitted. These are directed at the photomultiplier tube's photocathode, which emits electrons by the photoelectric effect. These electrons are electrostatically accelerated and focused by an electrical potential so that they strike the first dynode of the tube. The impact of a single electron on the dynode releases a number of secondary electrons which are in turn accelerated to strike the second dynode. Each subsequent dynode impact releases further electrons, and so there is a current amplifying effect at each dynode stage. Each stage is at a higher potential than the previous to provide the accelerating field. The resultant output signal at the anode is in the form of a measurable pulse for each photon detected at the photocathode, and is passed to the processing electronics. The pulse carries information about the energy of the original incident radiation on the scintillator. Thus both intensity and energy of the radiation can be measured.
The scintillator must be in complete darkness so that visible light photons do not swamp the individual photon events caused by incident ionising radiation. To achieve this a thin opaque foil, such as aluminised mylar, is often used, though it must have a low enough mass to prevent undue attenuation of the incident radiation being measured.
The article on the photomultiplier tube carries a detailed description of the tube's operation.

Detection materials

The scintillator consists of a transparent crystal, usually a phosphor, plastic (usually containing anthracene) or organic liquid (see liquid scintillation counting) that fluoresces when struck by ionizing radiation.
Cesium iodide (CsI) in crystalline form is used as the scintillator for the detection of protons and alpha particles. sodium iodide (NaI) containing a small amount of thallium is used as a scintillator for the detection of gamma waves and Zinc Sulphide is widely used as a detector of alpha particles.

Detector efficiencies


Schematic of a scintillating crystal combined with a photomultiplier.
See also: Counting efficiency

Gamma

The quantum efficiency of a gamma-ray detector (per unit volume) depends upon the density of electrons in the detector, and certain scintillating materials, such as sodium iodide and bismuth germanate, achieve high electron densities as a result of the high atomic numbers of some of the elements of which they are composed. However, detectors based on semiconductors, notably hyperpure germanium, have better intrinsic energy resolution than scintillators, and are preferred where feasible for gamma-ray spectrometry.

Neutron

In the case of neutron detectors, high efficiency is gained through the use of scintillating materials rich in hydrogen that scatter neutrons efficiently.Liquid scintillation counters are an efficient and practical means of quantifying beta radiation.

Applications

Scintillation counters are used to measure radiation in a variety of applications.
Several products have been introduced in the market utilising scintillation counters for detection of potentially dangerous gamma-emitting materials during transport. These include scintillation counters designed for freight terminals, border security, ports, weigh bridge applications, scrap metal yards and contamination monitoring of nuclear waste. There are variants of scintillation counters mounted on pick-up trucks and helicopters for rapid response in case of a security situation due to dirty bombs or radioactive waste.[1][2] Hand-held units are also commonly used.[3]

Guidance on application use

In the United Kingdom the HSE has issued a user guidance note on selecting the correct radiation measurement instrument for the application concerned [1]. This covers all radiation instrument technologies, and is a useful comparative guide to the use of scintillation detectors.

Alpha and Beta contamination detection


Hand-held large area alpha scintillation probe under calibration
Industrial radioactive contamination monitors, either hand-held or installed require a large detection area to ensure efficient and rapid coverage of monitored surfaces. For this the scintillation counter with a large area scintillator window and integrated photomultiplier tube is ideally suited and finds wide application in the field of radioactive contamination monitoring of personnel and the environment. Detectors are designed to have one or two scintillation materials, depending on the application. "Single phosphor" detectors are used for either alpha or beta, and "Dual phosphor" detectors are used to detect both.
A scintillator such as zinc sulphide is used for alpha particle detection, whilst plastic scintillators are used for beta detection. The resultant scintillation energies can be discriminated so that alpha and beta counts can be measured separately with the same detector. This technique is used in both hand-held and fixed monitoring equipment, and such instruments are relatively inexpensive compared with the gas proportional detector.

Scintillation counter as a spectrometer


The experimental setup for determination of γ-radiation spectrum with a scintillation counter. A high voltage power supply is connected to the scintillation counter. The scintillation counter is connected to the Multichannel Analyser which sends information to the computer.
Scintillators often convert a single photon of high energy radiation into high number of lower-energy photons, where the number of photons per megaelectronvolt of input energy is fairly constant. By measuring the intensity of the flash (the number of the photons produced by the x-ray or gamma photon) it is therefore possible to discern the original photon's energy.
The spectrometer consists of a suitable scintillator crystal, a photomultiplier tube, and a circuit for measuring the height of the pulses produced by the photomultiplier. The pulses are counted and sorted by their height, producing a x-y plot of scintillator flash brightness vs number of the flashes, which approximates the energy spectrum of the incident radiation, with some additional artifacts. A monochromatic gamma radiation produces a photopeak at its energy. The detector also shows response at the lower energies, caused by Compton scattering, two smaller escape peaks at energies 0.511 and 1.022 MeV below the photopeak for the creation of electron-positron pairs when one or both annihilation photons escape, and a backscatter peak. Higher energies can be measured when two or more photons strike the detector almost simultaneously (pile-up, within the time resolution of the data acquisition chain), appearing as sum peaks with energies up to the value of two or more photopeaks added.[4]

History

The modern electronic scintillation counter was invented in 1944 by Sir Samuel Curran[5][6] whilst he was working on the Manhattan Project at the University of California at Berkeley, and it is based on the work of earlier researchers reaching back to Antoine Henri Becquerel, who is generally credited with discovering radioactivity, whilst working on thephosphorescence of certain uranium salts (in 1896). The Spinthariscope was an early method of detecting the scintillation events by eye."

END

What Is A Scintillation Counter And How Does It Work? via @AGreenRoad 

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