Castle build.

[James Luck]

Hello All

I would like advise from the experience pool if thats acceptable.
Im working on getting a high resolution detector set up and running, but in the mean time while I play Email tag I figured I would work more on my castle.

Currently the castle I've used for experimenting is bare lead, lots of lead! About 50mm in the bottom, 75mm in the sides, and 30mm in the lid.
• I know some of the basic knowledge of using tin/pewter, then copper to cut down on XRF, isolate the detector from the sheild as much as allowable, and lining the chamber in pmma for source shielding. Etc

> Anyone here experiment with using other metals in replacement of Tin, or as a addition to their copper liner?


I currently only have a limited supply of pewter not enough to cover my walls, and the Tin i do have is thin dental Tin i use for tube compensation.
(money is tight currently at the Luck Labs).
With the money issue also comes i only have enough 1.25mm copper to do one layer, is that enough. I mean something is better than nothing.

Any thoughts from the community?
Id like to try and stretch as much as I can out of the detector, although its table top res does knock my LaBr3 out of the water.

Appreciate it,
James Luck LLi

[invader]

my example of the use of diferent shielding materials, with the result after each layer.



On the graph I dont have the line with the Cu layer because on this scale the efect is not visivel, I would have to make a graph without the base line without any shield so that the copper efect would be visivel.

.

[invader]

You can use many elements for shielding, the reason to use a graded shield is each layer to be the shield for the XRF radiation of the previous layer.
As a rule higher atomic number are better gamma shields, but higher atomic numbers have more electron levels and produce higher energy radiation.
Lead atomic number is 82
Tin atomic number is 50
Copper atomic number is 29

You can use any other element that are close to this numbers,
an option for lead is Bismut (83)
an option for Tin is Cadmium (48) or Silver (47)
an option for Copper is Zinc (30)

The problem with the options is that the price is a problem.

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