Nuclear Techniques ›› 2015, Vol. 38 ›› Issue (6): 60502-060502.

• NUCLEAR PHYSICS, INTERDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH •

### Calculation of desired X-ray collection angle on XRF analyzer designed by Monte Carlo method

LIU Hefan GE Liangquan XIE Xicheng ZHAO Jiankun LUO Yaoyao

1. (Chengdu University of Technology, Key Laboratory of Applied Nuclear Techniques in Geosciences, Chengdu 610059, China)
• Received:2014-09-22 Revised:2014-11-20 Online:2015-06-10 Published:2015-06-05

Abstract: Background: The designing of the X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyzer’s geometric layouts need to be considered, such as ‘detector to specimen’ distance, ‘detector to source’ distance, ‘source to specimen’ distance. The desired X-ray collection angle is one of the important factors of the detection performance. However, the experience geometric layouts have been unable to meet every XRF analyzer designing, because the performance of the excitation source or the detector is getting better, sample processing technology is much more advanced, and so on. Purpose: The aim is to study the impact of the desired X-ray collection angle on XRF analyzer designing, and provide a technical guidance on methodologies for XRF analyzer designing. Methods: In this paper, we build the XRF analyzer models by the Monte Carlo method and analyze the impacts of the desired X-ray collection angle on XRF analyzer designing. Results: Kinds of factors with the desired X-ray collection angle are analyzed, such as Cu’s X-ray characteristic fluorescence peak counts, the ‘detector axis to specimen’ distance, the Cu’s ‘peak to source’ ratio. Conclusions: With the increasing of distance between the detector and the specimen, the detector’s pulse counts satisfy an exponential decay law. With the desired X-ray collection angle increasing, the Cu’s X-ray characteristic fluorescence peak counts increase linearly. With the desired X-ray collection angle increasing, the ‘peak to source’ ratio decays exponentially, but the ‘peak to total’ ratio remains the same.