The Use of alpha/beta Liquid Scintillation Spectrometry in Marine Tracer Studies

[摘要] Liquid scintillation spectrometry (LSS) is becoming an increasingly important tool in the analysis of both anthropogenic and naturally occurring radionuclides, partly due to the introduction of pulse shape discrimination (PSD) into commercial, beta counting instruments. PSD allows alpha and alpha events, in the same sample, to be separated into different multi-channel analysers (MCAs), opening up the possibility for novel applications of the technique to be developed. PSD works by examining the duration of individual pulses as they reach the photomultiplier tube (PMT) anode, alpha pulses being longer than beta pulses. The optimum pulse decay discriminator (PDD) setting is found by determining the misclassification of events over a range of settings for a pure alpha emitter and a pure beta emitter, referred to as standards.

[发布机构] University:University of Glasgow

[关键词] Analytical chemistry, Nuclear chemistry, Chemical oceanography