Design of thin film detectors and applications on 252Cf fission products

Thin film detector was made that can produce an output pulse proportional to the energy lost by the charged particles passing through the film. Thin films with the different thicknesses were obtained by using NE 102A plastic scintillator. The detection properties of these films have been investigated by using the fission fragments of 252Cf as charged particles. The film thicknesses were obtained indirectly by measuring the energy losses of alpha particles passing through the film. Residual energies of the fission fragments were measured with a heavy-ion detector. While the charged particles are passing through the film, they produce pulses proportional to dE/dX which is related to the mass times the square of the atomic numbers of those particles. By using this property of thin films, together with an ORTEC 423 Particle Identifier (P.I.) an attempt was made to obtain the mass distribution of 252Cf-fission fragments. The mass and energy distribution spectra obtained with the above method were in good agreement with the spectra given in the literature except the lack of characteristic fine structure. This was attributed to the poor energy resolution properties of the thin film detectors used in this experiment. (author)