On the holistic validation of electronic materials compound for irradiation study. Experimental and calculated results

Due to the large variations of chemical compositions in electronic material, the estimation of the radionuclide inventory following irradiation represents a technical challenge at CERN high-energy particle accelerators. In particular, the activation of printed circuit boards is of concern to the CERN experiments as they are widely used for various purposes ranging from safety systems to sub-detector controls. Because of maintenance operations, part of this equipment has to be removed from the accelerator machines. The literature provides a variety of compositions for electronic materials, leaving the problematic selection of the most appropriate composition for an activation study to the reader. In this article, we discuss two reference chemical compositions on the basis of a statistical analysis of large datasets of gamma spectroscopy results, and on ActiWiz calculations which take into account different activation scenarios at CERN. These results can be extended to electronic material irradiated in other particle accelerators. (author)