Determination of the saturation thickness and albedo factors for mercury(II) oxide and lead(II) oxide

It is important to know the saturation thickness and reflecting power of a target for accurate x-ray analysis. In the present work, the saturation thickness was determined by using photons scattered from mercury(II) oxide and lead(II) oxide targets. Also, albedo factors (albedo number, albedo energy and albedo dose) were determined experimentally. Mercury(II) oxide and lead(II) oxide were excited by 59.54keV gamma rays emitted from a Am-241 annular radioactive source with 5Ci activity by energy dispersive x-ray fluorescence. The scattered and emitted x-rays were counted by a high-purity germanium detector with a resolution of 182eV at 5.9keV at a scattering angle of 168(o). The saturation thickness decreased with the increasing mean atomic number. The albedo factors decreased with increasing target thickness.