Nuclear Technology and Radiation Protection 2012 Volume 27, Issue 2, Pages: 117-124
https://doi.org/10.2298/NTRP1202117S
Full text ( 715 KB)
Cited by
Effective atomic numbers, electron densities, and tissue equivalence of some gases and mixtures for dosimetry of radiation detectors
Singh Vishwanath P. (Department of Physics, Karnatak University, Dharwad, Karnatak, India)
Badiger Nagappa M. (Department of Physics, Karnatak University, Dharwad, Karnatak, India)
Total mass attenuation coefficients, µm, effective atomic number, Zeff, and
effective electron density, Neff, of different gases - carbon dioxide,
methane, acetylene, propane, butane, and pentane used in radiation detectors,
have been calculated for the photon energy of 1 keV to 100 GeV. Each gas has
constant Zeff values between 0.10 to 10 MeV photon energies; however, these
values are way far away from ICRU tissue. Carbon dioxide gas shows the
closest tissue equivalence in the entire photon energy spectrum. Relative
tissue equivalences of the mixtures of gases with respect to ICRU tissue are
in the range of 0.998-1.041 for air, argon (4.5%) + methane (95.5%), argon
(0.5%) + carbon dioxide (99.5%), and nitrogen (5%) + methane (7%) + carbon
dioxide (88%). The gas composition of xenon (0.5%) + carbon dioxide (99.5%)
shows 1.605 times higher tissue equivalence compared to the ICRU tissue. The
investigated photon interaction parameters are useful for exposure and energy
absorption buildup factors calculation and design, and fabrication of gaseous
detectors for ambient radiation measurement by the Geiger-Muller detector,
ionization chambers and proportional counters.
Keywords: effective atomic number, gamma detector, tissue equivalent, reactor, hydrocarbons, inert gases