June 2020. After some time searching around on the net for a scintillation material that I can shape at home, I’ve found a Dutch guy called Luuk that have some CsI(Na) crystals avaiable for free to make experiments. A couple of emails with him and voilà…. I’ve just received a nice piece of raw CsI(Na) crystal from him (Scionix?). Thank you Luuk!!! Sadly the crystal quickly cracked because, probably, thermal shock during transport. Summer is summer and postal services are not famous for the good handling of the crystals.

I’ve soon realized, carefully looking at the fractures, that I can cut out the intact middle section of it. That part will be “enclosed” with some PTFE white ribbon as reflecting layer and coupled on a fece with a PMT to make spectroscopy tests.

I’ve cutted out the intact part using a small arc saw made for modellism work with very fine teeths. It’s a good idea to handle the crystal with gloves to be sure to not pollute it.

The “rough” grinding of the crystal faces was made with 400 size sandpaper till I’ve get an almost rectangular shaped crystal.

Even with this rought grinding of the crystal faces, it coupled to a FEU85 PMT gives me 8% FWHM. The FEU85 used have 7% PHR at Cs137 peak.

I’ve finally decided to take a spectra of my pitchblende sample to see how does it perform and I’ve got a very nice result. I will try polish it even better and compare the results to see how much the crystal level of polishing affects it’s FWHM.