Measurements of inner-shell characteristic X-ray yields of thick W, Mo and Zr targets by low-energy electron impact and comparison with Monte Carlo simulations

• We measured characteristic X-ray yields of thick W, Mo, Zr by 5–29 keV electrons.
• Our measured data are in general in good agreement with the MC results with ∼10%.
• Error of 10% of characteristic X-ray yields will produce errors of 2–7% for BIXS.

Inner-shell characteristic X-ray yields are one of the important ingredients in the β-ray induced X-ray spectrometry (BIXS) technique which can be used to perform tritium content and depth distribution analyses in plasma facing materials (PLMs) and other tritium-containing materials, such as W, Mo, Zr. In this paper, the measurements of K, L, M-shell X-ray yields Y(E) of pure thick W (Z = 74), Mo (Z = 42) and Zr (Z = 40) element targets produced by electron impact in the energy range of 5–29 keV are presented. The experimental data for Y(E) are compared with the corresponding predictions from Monte Carlo (MC) calculations using the general purpose MC code PENELOPE. In general, a good agreement is obtained between the experiment and the MC calculations for the variation of Y(E) with the impact energy both in shape and in magnitude with ∼10%. The effect of uncertainty of inner-shell characteristic X-ray yields on the BIXS technique is also discussed.