Passive α-particles spectrometry by polycarbonate SSNTD using new etching conditions

By adding ethylenediamine to the common etchant composition (potassium hydroxide, water, methanol and/or ethanol) in electrochemical etching of lexan polycarbonate detectors, a passive α-particle spectrometry is resulted in the energy range of 0.8–5.2 MeV. This spectrometry is based on the track size distributions, which have a tailed normal shape and FWHM of less than 0.5 MeV. Also the energies of α-particles emitted by a 226Ra micro-precipitated source and its α-emitter daughters, which were detected by this method, were in accord with that of a surface barrier detector. Consequently, this method can be developed for alpha spectrometry such as radon/thoron and their α emitter daughters’ detection, separation and measurements.