I’ve finally tested my brand new 40x40mm NaI(Tl) crystal from OST making with it a new probe for my lab. This time I’ve tested epoxy glue for assembly. The dynode voltage divider is home made via a simple toner transfert/etching process.

First thing to do is to glue the crystal inside it’s aluminium housing with some epoxy glue. I’ve simply used a 46mm internal diameter, 50mm lengt aluminium pipe as coupling pipe. It’s external dimensions are 50mm and it will fit the inner diameter of the main probe pipe.

The crystal outer diameter is 45mm, the 1mm total clearance between coupling pipe and the crystal is filled with epoxy by placing the glue around the crystal body and sliding it into position. Next thing is to couple the crystal with the PMT and block in position with some tape.

Now some more epoxy….

And then I’ve slided the assembly inside the body pipe until it will block against the blue tape. As you can see the yellow and blue tape are simple a note of color and the blue one is used as sliding-stop reference mark.

After few minutes the glue will be hard enough to test the assembly. I’ve added a BNC terminated cable soldering the cable into the voltage divider pads, needed 1000V from my USB PMT Adapter and placed a piece of uraninite under it to take a spectra.

A very nice result!!!! Around 8% FWHM but this could be improved because the PMT was exposed to light during assembly and it’s noisy so it will take a day to rest. Today I’ve finally verified it with Cs137

7,8% FWHM but the software is not catching the correct peak position. I can expect a 0,5% FWHM error. This means 7,3% FWHM of the crystal. Not bad, not bad at all!!!