• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.54 no.11
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• pp.4215-4219
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• 2022

The Cd_0.95Mn_0.05Te_0.98Se_0.02 (CMTS) ingot was grown by the vertical Bridgman technique at low pressure. All wafers showed high resistivity, which suggests potential as a room-temperature semiconductor detector. The resistivity of the CMTS planar detector was 1.47 × 10¹⁰ Ω·cm and mobility lifetime product of electrons was 1.29 × 10^-3 cm²/V. The spectroscopic property with Am-241 and Co-57 was evaluated. The energy resolution about 59.5 keV gamma-ray of Am-241 was 11% and the photo-peak of 122 keV gamma-ray from Co-57 was clearly distinguished. The result shows the first detector-grade CMTS in the world and proves CMTS's potential as a radiation detector operating at room temperature.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics Engineers of Korea TE
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• v.39 no.1
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• pp.31-36
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• 2002

Low energy boron ions were implanted into the preamorphized and crystalline silicon substrates to form 0.2${\mu}m$ $p^+-n$ junctions. The rapid thermal annealing(RTA) was used to annihilate the crystal defects due to implantation and to activate the implanted boron ions, and the furnace annealing was employed to reflow the BPSG(bolo-phosphosilicate glass). The implantation conditions for Gepreamorphization were the energy of 45keV and the dose of 3$\times$1014cm-2. BF2 ions employed as a p-type dopant were implanted with the energy of 20keV and the dose of 2$\times$1015cm-2. The thermal conditions of RTA and furnace annealing were $1000^{\circ}C$/10sec and $850^{\circ}C$/40min, respectively. The junction depths were measured by SIMS and ASR techniques, and the 4-point probe was used to measure the sheet resistances. The electrical characteristics were analyzed via the leakage currents of the fabricated diodes. The single thermal processing with RTA produced shallow junctions of good qualities, and the thermal treatment sequence of furnace anneal and RTA yielded better junction characteristics than that of RTA and furnace anneal.

• Progress in Medical Physics
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.105-110
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• 2016

Sparse angular sampling has been studied recently owing to its potential to decrease the radiation exposure from computed tomography (CT). In this study, we investigated the analytic reconstruction algorithm in sparse angular sampling using the sinogram interpolation method for improving image quality and computation speed. A prototype of the spectral CT system, which has a 64-pixel Cadmium Zinc Telluride (CZT)-based photon-counting detector, was used. The source-to-detector distance and the source-to-center of rotation distance were 1,200 and 1,015 mm, respectively. Two energy bins (23~33 keV and 34~44 keV) were set to obtain two reconstruction images. We used a PMMA phantom with height and radius of 50.0 mm and 17.5 mm, respectively. The phantom contained iodine, gadolinium, calcification, and lipid. The Feld-kamp-Davis-Kress (FDK) with the sinogram interpolation method and Maximum Likelihood Expectation Maximization (MLEM) algorithm were used to reconstruct the images. We evaluated the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the materials. The SNRs of iodine, calcification, and liquid lipid were increased by 167.03%, 157.93%, and 41.77%, respectively, with the 23~33 keV energy bin using the sinogram interpolation method. The SNRs of iodine, calcification, and liquid state lipid were also increased by 107.01%, 13.58%, and 27.39%, respectively, with the 34~44 keV energy bin using the sinogram interpolation method. Although the FDK algorithm with the sinogram interpolation did not produce better results than the MLEM algorithm, it did result in comparable image quality to that of the MLEM algorithm. We believe that the sinogram interpolation method can be applied in various reconstruction studies using the analytic reconstruction algorithm. Therefore, the sinogram interpolation method can improve the image quality in sparse-angular sampling and be applied to CT applications.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.16-21
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• 2022

Background: Epidemiological observations such as mental retardation, physical deformities, etc., in children besides different types of cancer in the adult population of the Malwa region have been reported. The present study is designed to get insight into the role of naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM) in causing detrimental health effects observed in the general population of this region. Materials and Methods: Deep soil samples were collected from different locations in the Malwa region. Their activity concentrations were determined using low-level background gammaray spectrometry. High efficiency and high purity germanium detector capped in a lead-shielded chamber having a resolution of 1.8 keV at 1,173 keV and 2.0 keV at the 1,332 keV line of ⁶⁰Co was used in the present work. Data were evaluated with Genie-2000 software. Results and Discussion: Mean activity concentrations of ²³⁸U, ²³²Th, and ⁴⁰K in deep soil were found to be 101.3 Bq/kg, 65.8 Bq/kg, and 688.6 Bq/kg, respectively. The mean activity concentration of ²³⁸U was found to be three and half times higher than the global average prescribed by the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation (UNSCEAR). It was further observed that the activity concentration of ²³²Th and ⁴⁰K has a magnitude that is nearly one and half times higher than the global average prescribed by UNSCEAR. In addition, the radioisotope ¹³⁷Cs which is likely to have its origin in radiation fallout was also observed. It is postulated that the NORM present in high quantity in deep soil somehow get mobilized into the water aquifers used by the general population and thereby causing harmful health problems. Conclusion: It can be stated that the present work has been able to demonstrate the use of low background gamma-ray spectrometry to understand the role of NORM in causing health-related effects in a general population of the Malwa region of Punjab, India.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.189-203
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• 2008

The physical and chemical properties of radioactive waste drums, which have been temporarily stored on site, should be characterized before their shipment to a disposal facility in order to prove that the properties meet the acceptance guideline. The investigation of NDT(Nondestructive Test) method was figured out that the contents in drum, the quantitative analysis of free standing water and void fraction can be examined with X-ray NDT techniques. This paper describes the characteristics of X-ray NDT such as its principles, the considerations for selection of X-ray system, etc. And then, the waste drum characteristics such as drum type and dimension, contents in drum, etc. were examined, which are necessary to estimate the optimal X-ray energy for NDT of a drum. The estimation results were that: $(R)\acute{A}$ the proper X-ray energy is under 3 MeV to test the drums of 320 ${\beta}\S$ and less; $(R)\ddot{E}$ both X-ray systems of 450 keV and/or 3 MeV might be needed considering the economical efficiency and the realization. The number of drums that can be tested with 450 keV and 3 MeV X-ray system was figured out as 42,327 and 18,105 drums (based on storage of 2006. 12), respectively. Four testing scenarios were derived considering equipment procurement method, outsourcing or not, etc. The economical and feasibility assessment for the scenarios was resulted in that an optimal scenario is dependent on the acceptance guide line, the waste generator's policy on the waste treatment and the delivery to a disposal facility, etc. For example, it might be desirable that a waste generator purchases two 450 keV mobile system to examine the drums containing low density waste, and that outsourcing examination for the high density drums, if all NDT items such as quantitative analysis for 'free standing water' and 'void fraction', and confirmation of contents in drum have to be characterized. However, one 450 keV mobile system seems to be required to test only the contents in 13,000 drums per year.

• Progress in Superconductivity
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.162-166
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• 2008

We are developing a sensitive gamma ray spectrometer based on superconducting transition edge sensors. The detector consists of a small piece of high purity Sn as an absorber and a Ti/Au bilayer as a temperature sensor. It is designed to measure the thermal signal caused by absorption of gamma rays. The mechanical support and the thermal contact between the absorber and the thermometer were made with Stycast epoxy. The bilayer was formed by e-beam evaporation and patterned by wet etching on top of a $SiN_X$ membrane. A sharp superconducting transition of the film was measured near 100 mK. When the film was biased to the edge of the transition, signals were observed due to single photon absorption emitted from an $^{241}Am$ source. The measured spectrum showed several characteristic peaks of the source including 59.5 keV gamma line. The full with at half maximum was about 900 eV for the 59.5 keV gamma line. The background was low enough to resolve low energy lines. Considerations to improve the energy resolution of the gamma ray spectrometer are also discussed.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.35 no.3
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• pp.234-242
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• 2003

The full energy peak efficiency of a hyper pure germanium (HPGe) detector was calibrated in a wide energy range from 0.06 to 11 MeV. Both the experimental technique and the Monte Carlo method were used for the efficiency calibration. The measurement was performed using the standard radioisotopes in the low energy region of $60{\sim}1408$ keV, which was further extended up to 11 MeV by using the $^{14}N(n,r)\;and\;^{35}Cl(n,r)$ reactions. The GEANT Monte Carlo code was used for efficiency calculation. The calculated efficiency had the same dependency on the r-ray energy with the measurement, and the discrepancy between the calculation and the measurement was minimized by fine-tuning of the detector geometry. From the calculated result, the efficiency curve of the HPGe detector was reliably determined particularly in the high energy region above several MeV, where the number of measured efficiency points is relatively small despite the wide energy region. The calculated efficiency agreed with the measurement within about $7\%$. In addition to the efficiency calculation, the origin of the local minimum near 600 keV on the efficiency curve was analyzed as a general characteristics of a HPGe detector.

• Journal of Radiation Protection and Research
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.41-50
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• 1996

In this study, the theoretical calculation of the air kerma-to-dose equivalent conversion factors was performed with a Monte Carlo N-Particle transport code for the two types of extremity phantom of the ANSI and the KAERI, respectively. Considering the distribution of absorbed dose due to the interaction of homogeneous Parallel broad beam of monoenergetic primary photons in the range between 15keV and 1.5MeV, the air kerma-to-dose equivalent conversion factors based on the kerma approximation were calculated. It is showed that all the theoretical conversion factors of the two types of the extremity phantom for the ANSI and the KAERI agree well with the experimental values of the ANSI N13.32 draft(1995) for each energy within 5.7%, maximum difference ratio, except for 13.6%, difference ratio in the case for the energy of less than 40keV. It is due to uncertainties of experiment occurred in the low X-ray energy range and geometry considered in the MCNP code.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.46 no.2
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• pp.217-224
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• 2014

The present work used the efficiency transfer method used to calculate the full energy peak efficiency (FEPE) curves of the (2"*2" & 3"*3") NaI (Tl) detectors based on the effective solid angle subtended between the source and the detector. The study covered the effect of the self attenuation coefficient of the source matrix (with a radius greater than the detector's radius) on the detector efficiency. $^{152}$ An Eu aqueous radioactive source covering the energy range from 121.78 keV up to 1408.01 keV was used. In this study an empirical formula was deduced to calculate the difference between the measured and the calculated efficiencies [without self attenuation] at low and high energy regions. A proper balance between the measured and calculated efficiencies [with self attenuation] was achieved with discrepancies less than 3%, while reaching 39% for calculating values [without self attenuation] due to working with large sources, or for low photon energies.

• Publications of The Korean Astronomical Society
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• v.30 no.2
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• pp.457-459
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• 2015

Observations show that the accretion flows in low-luminosity active galactic nuclei (LLAGNs) probably have a two-component structure with an inner hot, optically thin, advection dominated accretion flow (ADAF) and an outer truncated cool, optically thick accretion disk. As shown by Taam et al. (2012), within the framework of the disk evaporation model, the truncation radius as a function of mass accretion rate is strongly affected by including the magnetic field. We define the parameter ${\beta}$ as $p_m=B^2/8{\pi}=(1-{\beta})p_{tot}$, (where $p_{tot}=p_{gas}+p_m$, $p_{gas}$ is gas pressure and $p_m$ is magnetic pressure) to describe the strength of the magnetic field in accretion flows. It is found that an increase of the magnetic field (decreasing the value of ${\beta}$) results in a smaller truncation radius for the accretion disk. We calculate the emergent spectrum of an inner ADAF + an outer truncated accretion disk around a supermassive black hole by considering the effects of the magnetic field on the truncation radius of the accretion disk. By comparing with observations, we found that a weaker magnetic field (corresponding to a bigger value of ${\beta}$) is required to match the observed correlation between $L_{2-10keV}/L_{Edd}$ and the bolometric correction $k_{2-10keV}$, which is consistent with the physics of the accretion flow with a low mass accretion rate around a black hole.