J Radioanal Nucl Chem
DOI 10.1007/s10967-013-2555-2
On the design and installation of a Compton–suppressed HPGe
spectrometer at the Budapest neutron-induced prompt gamma
spectroscopy (NIPS) facility
László Szentmiklósi • Zoltán Kis • Tamás Belgya
Andrey N. Berlizov
Received: 8 March 2013
Ó Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, Hungary 2013
Abstract An important aspect of the ongoing upgrade at
the Budapest PGAA-NIPS facility has been the design and
installation of a second Compton-suppressed gamma
spectrometer. The aim was to provide excellent spectro-
scopic conditions for future position sensitive and large
sample prompt gamma activation analysis applications.
The optimum geometry of the setup was determined by
Monte Carlo calculations with the MCNP-CP code. The
suppression factors for various layouts (co-axial, perpen-
dicular), shapes (cylindrical, tapered), and thicknesses were
compared at different gamma-ray energies. The optimum
configuration, as a trade-off between performance and cost,
was selected, purchased, and installed. Several character-
istic features of a collimated, Compton-suppressed system
could be revealed, which allowed us to achieve a better and
cost-effective performance. The calculations were vali-
dated with a 14N(n,c)15N calibration source.
Paper presented on the 24. Seminar Aktivierungsanalyse und
Gammaspektroskopie (SAAGAS), 26–28 February 2013,
Technische Universität München in Garching.
L. Szentmiklósi (&)
Z. Kis
T. Belgya
Nuclear Analysis and Radiography Department, Centre for
Energy Research, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, P.O. Box 49,
Budapest 1525, Hungary
e-mail: szentmiklosi.laszlo@energia.mta.hu
A. N. Berlizov
Institute for Nuclear Research, National Academy of Sciences
of Ukraine, Prospekt Nauki 47, Kiev MSP 03680, Ukraine
Present Address:
A. N. Berlizov
International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna International
Centre, P.O. Box 100, 1400 Vienna, Austria
•
Keywords Prompt gamma activation analysis (PGAA)

Neutron induced prompt gamma spectrometry (NIPS)

Compton suppression
HPGe gamma-ray detector

Anti-coincidence
Monte Carlo simulation
MCNP–CP
Introduction
Prompt-gamma activation analysis (PGAA) [1] is a nuclear
analytical technique for non-destructive determination of
elemental and isotopic compositions. The sample is irra-
diated in a beam of slow neutrons and the gamma-rays
from the radiative neutron capture are detected on-line. In
contrast to the more typical gamma-spectrometric appli-
cations, the energies of the photons range from 40 keV to
12 MeV, while the spectra may contain several hundreds of
peaks. Due to the increasing probability of Compton-
scattering at MeV energies, the low-energy part of the
spectrum is dominated by the cumulative Compton-pla-
teaus of the high-energy peaks. The use of a Compton-
suppressed spectrometer is therefore of great importance in
achieving low detection limits [2, 3].
An important aspect of the ongoing upgrade at the
Budapest PGAA-NIPS facility [4] has been the design and
installation of a second Compton-suppressed gamma
spectrometer at the NIPS station. The motivation of the
present study has been to optimize the gamma spectro-
scopic conditions for future position-sensitive and large-
sample prompt gamma activation analysis applications.
The present study describes the design, installation and
validation procedure.
Monte Carlo methods have a proven record as a tool for
predicting the detector performance and spectroscopic
conditions at arbitrary geometries [5, 6], even before the
realization [7]. However, most of these studied the detector
123

performance in the ‘‘conventional’’ energy range, i.e. up to
2–3 MeV, and limited efforts have only been made to study
Compton-suppression in a broad energy range (up to
11 MeV) [8] used in PGAA.
We have applied the MCNP-CP program [9] in our
calculations. It is an extension to the general purpose
Monte Carlo code MCNP 4C [10] to handle correlated
particle production and detection. Hence it is suitable to
study responses and efficiencies of multi-detector systems
such as cluster, clovers, Compton-suppressed and pair
spectrometers. In addition, an advanced model for Comp-
ton-scattering is included, fixing the inadequate response of
standard MCNP code near the Compton-edges and the
backscatter peak. In our previous study we described the
response of our PGAA detector [11] up to 2.2 MeV.
At least four basic types of Compton-suppressors are
operational at PGAA facilities worldwide, which were all
involved in the present comparative study. They belong to
two main categories, co-axial and perpendicular, defined
by the angle between the axes of the central HPGe and the
suppressor. Their performances were systematically com-
pared and the optimum solution for the NIPS facility’s
detector was selected.
The co-axial geometry can be further divided into three
subcategories. The simplest type is a ‘cylindrical’ sup-
pressor tube around the HPGe, which is employed at the
PGAA facility of FRM-II Garching, Germany [12] (for-
merly operational at PSI, Switzerland [13]). If a smaller-
diameter collimator tube is applied than that of HPGe’s
entrance window, a geometry ‘cylindrical with nose’ is
formed [14]. As an option, a backscatter plug (also known
as ‘catcher’) can be placed around the HPGe’s cold finger
to cover an even higher solid angle, as it is done with our
primary PGAA detector at Budapest [15] as well as at the
PGAA facility of JAEA, Japan [16].
A completely different layout is if the HPGe is placed
perpendicularly to the axis of the entrance collimator, as it
is used at thermal [17] and cold PGAA stations of NIST,
Fig. 1 Basic geometries of Compton-suppressed detectors for PGAA. (a) cylindrical, (b) cylindrical with nose, (c) cylindrical with nose and
catcher, (d) perpendicular
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J Radioanal Nucl Chem
USA, [18] and also as the secondary detector of FRM-II
PGAA setup, Garching, Germany [12].
The two assumptions of the present study were the use
of our existing n-type HPGe detector (Canberra GR
2318/S, 110 cm3 active volume, 51 mm crystal diameter,
55 mm length, 23 % relative efficiency, extended cold
finger), and the material of the suppressor should be bis-
muth germanate (BGO). This high-Z material has high
enough efficiency for several MeV gamma rays, it has good
timing properties and its activation from neutrons is
favorably low. In addition, it was intended to keep the
option open for a future detector update or for accommo-
dation of user-provided large-volume detectors, therefore
the dimensions of the internal cavity was decided to be
larger than presently required.
Calculations
As a first step the general performance of the four layouts
were compared by computation. The geometries, as
implemented in the MCNP-CP are depicted in Fig. 1.
In all cases, the entrance collimator had a diameter of
25 mm, while the sample-to-detector distance was fixed at
235 mm. This ensures a negligible level of true coinci-
dence summing through limiting the solid angle. The front
lead shieling was 100 mm in all configurations.
In the first comparative study the thickness of the BGO
was 45 mm, which was taken as an initial value from our
suppressor presently in use. Each simulation was running
for 60 h on a Pentium 4 PC. Both the suppressed and
unsuppressed spectra were generated from the same run
into 1-keV wide energy bins; and the suppression ratios,
i.e. the ratio of counts in the suppressed vs. unsuppressed
spectra were calculated. The comparison was done at
energies of 500, 2,223, 4,000, 6,000, 8,000 and
10,000 keV. In the case of the 2.2 MeV photon (i.e. the
capture line of 1H) a voluminous source was used,
J Radioanal Nucl Chem

Fig. 2 The response function

of the various configurations,
shown for the capture line of
hydrogen (E = 2223 keV). The
curves were normalized for
unity full-energy peak area

representing a water sample in a vial (see Fig. 2). In the the volume of the crystal. It was found that up to
other cases a point-source was defined. 130–150 mm the Total-to-Peak (T/P) ratio, i.e. the ratio of
The total-to-peak ratio, which, in contrast to the more the counts in the spectrum over the counts in the full-
commonly used peak-to-total ratio, can be well interpo- energy peak, improves linearly with the length (for this
lated with a straight line, is a good overall performance particular HPGe crystal), while increasing the length fur-
indicator, and was used to compare the layouts. The con- ther adds less and less benefit (see Fig. 3).
clusion of these calculations was that above 2 MeV the Having fixed the optimal length of the BGO crystal the
suppression ratios reach an almost constant level, i.e. 0.45 effect of the outside taper was subsequently studied. As the
for ‘cylindrical’ and ‘cylindrical with nose’, 0.41 ‘cylin- backward scattered gammas have typically low energies, it
drical with nose and catcher’, while 0.52 for ‘perpendicu- was assumed that material (and hence cost) can be saved if
lar’ geometry. the front part is made conical. Indeed, the effect of tapering
When the characteristics of the spectrum are studied, the has an effect only on a limited region of the spectrum, i.e.
‘cylindrical’ configuration offers the least favorable per- between the Compton-edge and the single escape peak,
formance. The three other configurations suppress the
smooth baseline to a similar extent; some differences are,
however, found close to the Compton-edge, in the ampli-
tudes of the escape peaks, at the annihilation peak, and also
at the baseline level below the 1 MeV energy level. It
turned out that the catcher has only significant effect at the
low energy part of the spectrum, near the lower threshold.
Due to cost-effectiveness it was decided to drop for now
the catcher from the present configuration.
The crucial difference between ‘cylindrical with nose’
and the ‘perpendicular’ layouts is the full-energy peak
efficiency, in favor of the co-axial, which is due to the
lower crystal thickness of our existing HPGe crystal in
perpendicular orientation.
Therefore the ‘co-axial geometry with nose’ was
selected for further optimization. During this process the
length of the side BGO element was stepwise increased Fig. 3 The relative total-to-peak ratio as a function of the side BGO
from 110 to 190 mm to obtain the best price-to-perfor- element length for 10 MeV gamma-ray energy and for the ‘cylindrical
mance value. Here we assumed that price is proportional to with nose’ geometry

123

whereas at other energies it had no influence. For instance,
for a point source with 6 MeV energy, the obtained total-
to-peak ratios were 5.88 and 5.98 (peak-to-total 0.170 and
0.167) in the cylindrical and in the conical configurations,
respectively. Therefore a taper angle of 30° was selected.
For practical reasons the inner edge of the nose was also
removed to avoid the direct irradiation of the suppressor
through the entrance lead collimator.
Finally the thickness of the side BGO was optimized. A
value of 45–50 mm was concluded, which is in good
agreement with the initial estimation, and effective even
for 10 MeV gamma rays.
Fig. 4 (a) the final geometry of the BGO suppressor [19]. (b) the 3D
view of the NIPS Compton-suppressed spectrometer. The top and rear
layers of the lead shielding were made hidden to reveal the internal
layout. The neutron beam goes from left-bottom to right-top in an Al
flight tube to the sample chamber. Downstream are a neutron
radiograph and the beam stop located
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J Radioanal Nucl Chem
Experimental
Based on the above mentioned parameters the final design
(see Fig. 4a) and the production of the detector were made
by the Scionix, B.V. Netherlands [19]. The delivered BGO
suppressor was mounted onto a solid Al frame, whose
dimensions were determined to exactly fit into the lead
shielding made of lead bricks. The thickness of the lead is
10 cm all around, except for the rear side, where it is only
5 cm due to geometrical limitations (Fig. 4b). The gross
weight of the lead is 996 kg. The HPGe detector can be
pushed back from the measurement position for mainte-
nance on a trolley.
The outputs of the photomultiplier tubes were first inter-
normalized by adjusting their gains to produce similar
signal amplitudes, then daisy-chained. This unified signal
was then fed into an Ortec 113 scintillation preamplifier
and shaped with an Ortec 579 Fast Filter Amplifier. Using a
discriminator, a logic signal was formed at every valid
event, which was delayed by 8 ls and connected to the
gate input of a Canberra DSP-2060 digital signal processor.
The events were collected with a Canberra AIM 556B
Ethernet interface module. In all cases, suppressed and
unsuppressed spectra were recorded directly after each
other, to ensure the identical experimental conditions.
The tuning of the system was completed with 60Co and
137
Cs sources. The peak-to-background ratio was maxi-
mized by adjusting the thresholds and the timing, whereas
the incidental loss in the full-energy peak was kept below
3 %.
Room-background measurements were done for
237,000 s, in order to accurately determine the natural
background lines originating from the suppressor crystal
Fig. 5 The correlation plot of the simulated and measured efficiencies
J Radioanal Nucl Chem
and from impurities of the lead shielding. The count rates
of these lines are routinely corrected for in our element
analysis practice.
The performance of the assembled detector system in
prompt-gamma applications is demonstrated here with the
PGAA spectrum of a deuterated urea (CO(ND2)2) pellet
(diameter 20 mm, thickness 3 mm, weight 1.451 g). It
contains several analytical lines of N, C and residual H, up
to 11 MeV, while O is barely visible in the spectrum due to
its low cross-section. The 14N(n,c)15N reaction is used as a
primary calibration reaction, as the level scheme and the
intensity balance is well known [20]. The PGAA spectra of
these light elements contain discrete lines due to the simple
level schemes rather than continuum transitions; therefore
it is possible to reproduce them by computation. The
acquisition went on for 50–60,000 s, using a neutron beam
with 2.70 9 107 n cm-2 s-1 thermal equivalent flux. The
Fig. 6 The comparison of the
calculated and measured PGAA
spectra, in unsuppressed and
suppressed mode
acquired spectra were rebinned to 1 keV wide channels and
the background counts were removed. The simulation
results were tabulated accordingly.
Results and discussion
From the room background measurements it was concluded
that the present BGO suppressor, or its housing, contained
much more natural radioactive impurities than our primary
PGAA detector. This, however, plays important role only
in low-count rate applications, and does not seriously
degrade the performance of the detector under PGAA
conditions, where the typical count rate in the whole
spectrum is about 1,000 cps or more.
The spectra of Urea-D were also compared to the ones
measured earlier with our PGAA detector. The achieved
123

suppression factor of the new detector assembly approa-
ched that of our existing PGAA detector, and thereby found
to be suitable. On the other hand, the measured spectra
were compared to the simulation results. The individual
response functions were summed up with appropriate
weighting factors reflecting the count rates of the full
energy peaks to get to the spectrum.
The results showed a decent agreement, however, they
did not match quantitatively. Thanks to the more detailed
physics of the Compton-scattering, the calculated shape of
the spectra near the Compton-edges adequately reproduced
the measurements, unlike the official MCNP. The simula-
tion reproduced the shape of the Compton-baseline also
well, in both suppressed and unsuppressed mode, whereas
the areas of the full-energy peaks were found to be over-
estimated. For the unsuppressed case, at least, this was
double checked with the standard 4C and 5 versions of
MCNP, and they gave the same answer. The spectra made
by the MCNP code family could be used for quantitative
purposes only if an empirical energy-dependent scaling
factor is introduced to rescale the amplitude of the full-
energy peaks (Fig. 5).
This is in line with the findings of Rusev [21] for the
GEANT3 code. A parallel study with geant4 is still in
progress, whose results will be reported separately. A
comparison between measurement and simulation with
rescaled-amplitude full energy peaks is presented in
Fig. 6.
The performance of the suppression, i.e. the point-
wise ratio of the unsuppressed/suppressed spectra, was
reproduced with much better accuracy. This is illustrated
in Fig. 7. The points at 8–10 MeV scatter very much due
to the low statistics, but the general trend is well
followed.
Fig. 7 The point-wise ratio of the suppressed and unsuppressed
spectra, as obtained from the experiment and from the calculations.
A moving average filtering with a 30 keV wide window was applied
to smooth the curves
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J Radioanal Nucl Chem
Conclusions
With the present study it has been demonstrated that Monte
Carlo simulations are adequate to design detectors and
generate realistic-looking PGAA spectra of HPGe-BGO
systems. The four typical geometries in use at different
PGAA facilities worldwide were compared, the optimum
configuration was determined and its dimensions were
calculated. The response obtained with MCNP-CP, and
with other variants of MCNP is qualitatively correct,
whereas the full-energy peak areas seem to be overesti-
mated at high energies. Therefore their outputs should
always be used if supported with an experimental
validation.
With the installation of the NIPS Compton suppressor
the PGAA-NIPS facility practically doubled its capacity.
With the completion of the lead shielding, the performance
of this second station became comparable to the already
operational PGAA station, and will be utilized in numerous
international projects and facility access programs such as
EU FP7 NMI3, ERINDA, and CHARISMA.
Acknowledgments The authors acknowledge the financial support
of the NAP VENEUS 08 project (Contract No. OMFB-00184/2006)
and the technical help of Kálmán Takács. Certain commercial
equipment, instruments, software or materials are identified in this
paper in order to specify the experimental procedures in adequate
detail. This identification does not imply that the equipment or
materials identified are necessarily the best available for the purpose.
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