A new facility for High energy PIXE at the ARRONAX Facility

TL;DR

This paper discusses the development of a high-energy PIXE facility at ARRONAX, focusing on background analysis, detection limits, and methods to improve sensitivity for analyzing medium and heavy elements in thick samples.

Contribution

It introduces a new high-energy PIXE experimental setup at ARRONAX and evaluates background sources, detection limits, and optimization strategies for enhanced elemental analysis.

Findings

Detection limit of tens of ppm achieved

Background from bremsstrahlung and gamma rays quantified

Strategies for reducing activation and improving sensitivity identified

Abstract

Proton Induced X-ray Emission (PIXE) using high energy protons is a non destructive multi elemental technique that can analyze medium and heavy trace elements on thick samples. A new experimental setup is being built at the ARRONAX facility (Nantes, France) for such purpose. Tests have been made in order to quantify the background induced by a 68 MeV proton beam on a 250\mu m copper target. Our measurement has been compared with expected theoretical value including the various components of the bremsstrahlung and the Compton induced by gamma rays. This study has allowed us to determine a detection limit of the order of tens of ppm and has shown also the different ways to improve it. Amongst them are a better shielding of the detector and the use of lower beam intensity. Another ways consist to use the prompt gamma rays emitted by the interaction of the beam with the target nucleus as well as the registration of the decay of the activation product after the end of the bombardment. This activation and especially the production of long lived radionuclide can be controlled by tuning the proton energy and intensity resulting in a low activation which is not prejudicial to most of the samples and with almost no effect on the PIXE performances.