Purpose :
Superheated liquid has recently been used extensively as a radiation detector, and its superiority as a neutron detector compared to other conventional neutron detector has already been established. The present work relates to a sensitive neutron dosimeter, a device for monitoring neutron dose in some accelerator, radiotherapy and reactor sites.
Material and method:
The dosimeters consist of two vials with 6cm inner diameter and 14.5cm height. Tens of thousands of 60µm droplets suspended in a glycerine-based gel when they vaporized the diameter of each droplet reach to 500 µm. The glass vial containing the superheated liquid (R-12, C-318) drop was placed on the top of piezoelectric transducer. Drop-nucleation was sensed by the piezoelectric transducer and the electric signal sent out of it was then amplified and fed to high pass filter and then a differentiators and a comparator to avoid the false bubble counting due to external noise. Dosimeter consists of micro-controller, temperature monitoring, pressure monitoring, battery monitoring, LCD display, keypad and a serial communication. The output of the temperature and pressure sensor is processed and fed to ADC of micro-controller for necessary corrections. Liquid Crystal Display (LCD) is used to display information of the neutron dosimeter like bubble count, neutron dose, neutron dose-rate, temperature, elapsed time etc.
Conclusion :
The important features of system are compact, lightweight, cost effective and high neutron sensitivity as compared to conventional neutron survey meters. This device is capable of measuring a neutron dose as small as 0.01 microSv using superheated liquid as a sensitive liquid. The response is zero sensitivity to gamma radiation and it can be used for fast and thermal neutron dosimetry in same time
Key word: Superheated liquid, neutron, piezoelectric transducer, dosimeter