Temperature Dependence of NaI(Tl) Radiation Scintillation Detectors’ Characteristics

Abstract

Scintillators belong to the oldest types of radiation detectors. Nowadays, for spectrometric purposes the use of semiconductive detectors is more common, but scintillation detectors are still in use for various specific measurement purposes. We have investigated the dependence of a gamma spectrum measured by NaI(Tl) scintillation detector on temperature changes. We examined the need of energy or efficiency recalibration and software compensation. Due to temperature dependence, scintillation detectors require energy recalibration before environmental and outdoor measurements or before the use of etalon sources for obtaining spectrum for follow-up calibration. We have elaborated on a simple method for energy recalibration of scintillation detectors at different temperatures. This method was converted into an algorithm and it can be either burned into instrument EPROM or used in software processing.