Radiation Detection

Hello Andrey, I personally would trust BecqMoni a lot more than theremino. Thereminos throws away a lot of spectroscopic information, and I generally got worse rez, both in numbers, as well as in actual peak separation. You can guesstimate your resolution by how well the 4 peaks from 186 to 351 keV ...

Hi Luuk, Thank you for the kind words! I added a pack of silica gel inside the detector, I guess that it will be enough to keep the crystal dry. I was a bit surprised about the loss of resolution at 59 keV, while all the others got better... There are still some things I will have to figure out with...

Thanks, it would be great to get a direct comparasion between P10 and Ar/CO2!
Will you document your build here?

Hello! Luuk had a wonderful 2x2" CsI(Tl) Crystal to sell, and I am always looking to build more detectors, so I just had to get it ;-) He did some work on it (I'd love to hear more details about that!), wrapped it in reflector and measured it, then sent it my way with some test sheets. photo_2021-03...

Well, I did some more tests, and Ar/CO2 definitely works better. The gain is way higher, so I can lower the voltage to about 1/2 to count alphas only. The higher gain also allows me to go back to the 65µm anode wire, which is a huge advantage due to cost and availability. The difference is so big, t...

Oh wow, I just got my bottle of 80/20 Ar/CO2 and it works so well!
With it the Th sticker goes from 100 cpm to 2k cpm, indicating that I'm also seeing betas, and perhaps even gammas.

Argon alone isn't ideal, but should work for low activity stuff. Butane is denser than air, just like argon, but the constant flow prevents the chamber from backfilling with air. You can operate the counter in any orientation, but you might risk dropping your sample or dust from it in the detector i...

Thanks! The wire in the picture was the thick variant, I am having troubles to see the thin one with my own eyes. It all works surprisingly well, and I ordered some Ar/CO2 welding mix to try that as counting gas. Not as cheap as butane, but it doesn't burn, and doesn't have thiol additives. Also it ...

Hello! I wanted to share todays afternoon project. It's a simple proportional detector for alphas, runs on regular propane / butane and is sensitive to alphas only, with almost 2 pi efficiency! The materials are just a stainless steel hemisphere, two gas connectors and a BNC connector, the readout i...

Update:
The 1M variant is sold, but the 10M variant is still out there, now for a cool 5€ less!