Development of boron calibration via hybrid comparator method in prompt gamma activation analysis

Abstract

The prompt gamma activation analysis (PGAA) facility at the Nuclear Engineering Teaching Laboratory at The University of Texas at Austin was utilized to quantify boron concentrations in boron carbide semiconductor films deposited on silicon substrates. Calibration was complicated by the unique and varying sample geometries analyzed. In addition, there was a dearth of solid materials available with quantified boron concentrations having comparable or readily modifiable dimensions to exploit for calibration purposes. Therefore, a novel hybrid comparator method was developed for the quantification of boron utilizing aluminum as an inexpensive and easily machinable reference material. Aluminum samples were manufactured with high tolerances to match the geometry of each sample of interest. Each boron carbide film sample and its congruent aluminum sample were measured in the PGAA system. The measured aluminum responses and relevant nuclear parameters were used to standardize the digitalcommons.unl.edu

Volume 4: Detection Systems and Ultra-Cold Neutrons

“…The 2017 Lindstrom paper[Lindstrom and Révay 2017] provides a more recent review of PGAA and describes new instruments installed in the last 10 years in Argentina, Brazil, China, India, Japan, as well as US university facilities at Oregon State and the University of Texas. More established PGAA facilities in Budapest[Belgya 2012] [Szentmiklósi et al 2016], and at the National Institute of Standard and Technology in Maryland[Paul et al 2015] have led to breakthroughs in the last 5 years in archaeological research[Maróti et al 2020] [Livingston et al 2018] [Jwa et al 2018] [Kluge et al 2018], materials science[Otsuki et al 2019] [Miura and Matsue 2016] [Artnak et al 2018, food science[Fukushima et al 2014], and energy research[Stieghorst et al 2018].…”