Alanazi Nadyah, Alodhayb Abdullah N, Almutairi Atheer, Alshehri Hanan, AlYemni Sarah, Alsowygh Ghadah, Abdulmawla Sabaa, Shamma Khaled, Albrithen Hamad, Muthuramamoorthy Muthumareeswaran, Almuqrin Aljawhara H
Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia.
Research Chair for Tribology, Surface, and Interface Sciences, Department of Physics and Astronomy, College of Science, King Saud University, Riyadh 11451, Saudi Arabia.
Materials (Basel). 2021 Nov 19;14(22):7035. doi: 10.3390/ma14227035.
This study generally relates to nuclear sensors and specifically to detecting nuclear and electromagnetic radiation using an ultrasensitive quartz tuning fork (QTF) sensor. We aim to detect low doses of gamma radiation with fast response time using QTF. Three different types of QTFs (uncoated and gold coated) were used in this study in order to investigate their sensitivity to gamma radiations. Our results show that a thick gold coating on QTF can enhance the quality factor and increase the resonance frequency from 32.7 to 32.9 kHz as compared to uncoated QTF. The results also show that increasing the surface area of the gold coating on the QTF can significantly enhance the sensitivity of the QTF to radiation. We investigated the properties of gold-coated and uncoated QTFs before and after irradiation by scanning electron microscopy. We further investigated the optical properties of SiO wafers (quartz) by spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE). The SE studies revealed that even a small change in the microstructure of the material caused by gamma radiation would have an impact on mechanical properties of QTF, resulting in a shift in resonance frequency. Overall, the results of the experiments demonstrated the feasibility of using QTF sensors as an easy to use, low-cost, and sensitive radiation detector.
本研究总体涉及核传感器，具体涉及使用超灵敏石英音叉（QTF）传感器检测核辐射和电磁辐射。我们旨在使用QTF以快速响应时间检测低剂量的伽马辐射。本研究中使用了三种不同类型的QTF（未涂层和镀金的），以研究它们对伽马辐射的敏感性。我们的结果表明，与未涂层的QTF相比，QTF上的厚金涂层可以提高品质因数，并将共振频率从32.7 kHz提高到32.9 kHz。结果还表明，增加QTF上金涂层的表面积可以显著提高QTF对辐射的敏感性。我们通过扫描电子显微镜研究了辐照前后镀金和未涂层QTF的特性。我们还通过光谱椭偏仪（SE）进一步研究了SiO晶圆（石英）的光学特性。SE研究表明，即使伽马辐射引起材料微观结构的微小变化，也会对QTF的机械性能产生影响，导致共振频率发生偏移。总体而言，实验结果证明了使用QTF传感器作为一种易于使用、低成本且灵敏的辐射探测器的可行性。
