Experimental evaluation of the characteristic features of passivated ion implanted and surface barrier detectors for alpha spectrometry of plutonium

Experimental evaluation of a commonly used silicon surface barrier detector and of the recently introduced passivated ion implanted detector for alpha spectrometry is reported in terms of FWHM, peak to valley ratio, tail parameter and % tail contribution per unit alpha activity ratio using electrodeposited sources of plutonium prepared on platinum backing material. For this purpose, detectors of nearly the same diameter were employed (100 mm2 silicon surface barrier detector with a diamater of 1.13 cm and 80 mm2 passivated ion implanted silicon detector with a diameter of 1.01 cm). It is shown that the recently introduced passivated ion implanted detectors give smaller tailing effects. But there is no significant difference between the two detectors used in the present work w.r.t. FWHM and peak to valley ratios. Further, it is observed that the peak to valley ratio can be used to get an idea about240Pu/239Pu and241Am/238Pu alpha-activity ratios in the sample.