The instrumentation which is required for this experiment is a scintillator, Cerenkov radiator, Photomultipliers, preamplifiers, post amplifiers, Counter and high voltage unit. Other electronic circuits like threshold discriminators, coincidence circuits are in the form of NIM Modules. A mechanical structure for housing the two detectors has been fabricated in the WRIC workshop.
This experiment utilizes a proportional counter. A turbo-molecular pump based vacuum cum gas filling line and a P-10 gas cylinder have also been fabricated / procured and connected to the proportional counter. A Multi-Channel Analyzer his used to analyze output signals to construct the energy spectrum. Two radioactive sources (a) Iron-55 (Fe- 55) that emits 5.9 keV mono-energetic x-rays and (b) Cadmium – 109 (Cd-109) that produces 22.2 keV x-ray line have also been received. The proportional counter will be filled with gas mixture of 90% Argon + 10 % Methane (called P-10 Gas) at different pressures and detector characteristics like gas gain, energy resolution etc. and their variation with HV , gas pressure etc will be studied by shining x rays from radioactive sources. Another experiment will be to determine Mass Absorption Coefficient of different elements at specific x-ray energies by measuring absorption of x-rays of known energy.
This is a new generation solid state detector that works at temperatures in the range of + 10º C to -20º C by cooling by a thermoelectric cooler. Its energy resolution (R) is superior to that of a PC. Using x-ray lines of different energies its R will be studied at different energies and variation of R with energy will be measured and its dependence on different parameters of CZT will be inferred.