Development of portable gas proportional scintillation counters for x-ray spectrometry

A review on gas proportional scintillation counters (GPSCs) is presented. R ecent achievements towards the portability of simple, inexpensive and compa ct GPSCs are discussed. Compensation of solid angle effects with the curved grid technique can be used to produce non-focused GPSCs with medium-sized radiation windows, at least up to 80% of the photosensor active diameter, w ithout degradation of detector performance. Low power-consuming and compact vacuum UV photosensors that can operate in direct contact with the scintil lation gas, as an alternative to photomultiplier tubes, are now available. Small gettering devices with a low-power built-in heating elements have bee n shown to be sufficient for the required gas purification in GPSCs assembl ed with simple and inexpensive techniques, such as the use of epoxies for c eramic-to-metal joints. Copyright (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.