Nuclear Science and Techniques

《核技术》(英文版) ISSN 1001-8042 CN 31-1559/TL     2019 Impact factor 1.556

Nuclear Science and Techniques ›› 2017, Vol. 28 ›› Issue (11): 164

• NUCLEAR ELECTRONICS AND INSTRUMENTATION •

Uncertainty of an automatic system for counting alpha tracks on CR-39

Dun-Huang Fan, Wei-Hai Zhuo, Bo Chen, Wei-Yuan Zhang

1. Institute of Radiation Medicine, Fudan University, Shanghai 200032, China
• Contact: Bo Chen E-mail:bochenfys@fudan.edu.cn
• Supported by:

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 11375048).

PDF ShareIt Export Citation
Dun-Huang Fan, Wei-Hai Zhuo, Bo Chen, Wei-Yuan Zhang. Uncertainty of an automatic system for counting alpha tracks on CR-39.Nuclear Science and Techniques, 2017, 28(11): 164

Abstract:

For accurate counting of alpha tracks on the polyallyl diglycol carbonate of CR-39-type track detectors, the size distributions of both artifact tracks and alpha tracks were investigated with an automatic counting system. At the same temperature and etchant concentration, the numbers and sizes of alpha tracks changed significantly with the etching time, and the artifact track changes were smaller. At the etching time of 5 h, the sizes of alpha tracks were evidently larger than those of the artifact tracks, and the deviation of its size distribution was much smaller than those of longer etching time. Based on the size distribution of alpha tracks etched for 5 h, the overlap effect and uncertainty of overlap correction were studied by the Monte Carlo simulations for different track densities. It was found that the counting uncertainty of the system could be less than 6% in a density range of 10–160 tracks mm−2 after taking the overlap correction into account.