BUILDING A SINGLE-CHANNEL GAMMA-RAY SPECTROSCOPY USING SILICON PHOTOMULTIPLIER (SiPM) TECHNOLOGY

Abstract

Gamma-spectroscopy using scintillation detectors shows many outstanding advantages of detection efficiency, resolution and flexibility in installing configuration measurements, therefore, it is widely used in the field of research and application of radiation sources to solve practical problems. Using a silicon photomultiplier (SiPM) instead of a photomultiplier tube (PMT) in scintillation detectors allows reducing manufacturing and maintenance costs, as well as, shortening the size of the measuring systems. This paper presents the construction of a single-channel gamma-ray spectroscopy using NaI(Tl) scintillation detector combined with SiPM. The measurement system includes a 0,5 × 1 inch scintillation crystal NaI(Tl) connected with SiPM, SiPM polarized source block, amplifier block, pulse amplitude discriminator block, microcontroller block (Arduino) and control software to acquire data on computer. At room conditions, the measurement system achieves an energy resolution (FWHM) of 21,89 ± 0,15% and 19,38 ± 0,21% corresponding to reference sources of ¹³⁷Cs at 662 keV and ²²Na at 511keV. The obtained results are the basis for the improvement of gamma-ray detection for research on the applications of many uses of radiation at laboratory scale.