Effect of several β-ray stopping layers and uncertainty of X-ray yields on the BIXS method

Tritium analysis has an extensive application in the study of fusion reactor and nuclear technology. β-decay induced X-ray spectroscopy (BIXS) is a nondestructive tritium analysis technique, and it can detect deeper tritium distributions(∼0.1 mm and ∼l mm for high-Z materials and low-Z materials, respectively). In the BIXS method, a metal film as β-ray stopping layer has advantages of eliminating the interference of polarizational bremsstrahlung and reducing the detector's signal pile-up. In order to study the effect of several β-ray stopping layers on the BIXS method, we use the Monte Carlo code PENELOPE to simulate the BIXS experiments using Al, Au metal films and Ar gas as the β-ray stopping layers, and then use the regularization method to calculate and compare the results. In this paper, we also discuss the effects of accuracy of X-ray yield and bremsstrahlung spectrum incline on the BIXS method. The study in this paper indicates that the Al film is the best β-ray stopping layer in the BIXS method. (authors)