Diaphragm correction factors for the FAC-IR-300 free-air ionization chamber

A free-air ionization chamber FAC-IR-300, designed by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, is used as the primary Iranian national standard for the photon air kerma. For accurate air kerma measurements, the contribution from the scattered photons to the total energy released in the collecting volume must be eliminated. One of the sources of scattered photons is the chamber's diaphragm. In this paper, the diaphragm scattering correction factor, kdia, and the diaphragm transmission correction factor, ktr, were introduced. These factors represent corrections to the measured charge (or current) for the photons scattered from the diaphragm surface and the photons penetrated through the diaphragm volume, respectively. The kdia and ktr values were estimated by Monte Carlo simulations. The simulations were performed for the mono-energetic photons in the energy range of 20 − 300 keV. According to the simulation results, in this energy range, the kdia values vary between 0.9997 and 0.9948, and ktr values decrease from 1.0000 to 0.9965. The corrections grow in significance with increasing energy of the primary photons.