CdZnTe-Based X-Ray Spectrometer for Absolute Density Determination

Density is a very important property of materials because of its influence on their mechanical properties. For this reason, the possibility of measuring material density is of strategic importance for several industrial applications such as wood boards sawing, wood panels production, or ceramic tiles manufacturing. In order to answer to this need, X-ray densitometry techniques and computed tomography (CT) scanners are used nowadays. However, these traditional X-ray inspection techniques usually measure only relative density, or, in other terms, they need a calibration procedure before operation. To overcome this issue, Due2lab s.r.l. in collaboration with the Istituto dei Materiali per l'Elettronica ed il Magnetismo (IMEM)-Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR) Institute developed a CdZnTe (CZT)-based X-ray spectrometer capable of determining the absolute density value of a sample material in terms of g/cm(3) (and additionally extracting information about its elemental composition). The system has been specifically designed for in-line real-time nondestructive inspection of industrial production; thus, it is potentially capable to return density information within a very short acquisition time. In this article, we will describe the CZT spectrometer and the hyperspectral X-ray analysis set-up in detail and we will show how to perform absolute density measurement on three different materials: 1) a plastic polyethylene sample, 2) ceramic tiles, and 3) pine and fir wood samples.