A SIMPLE CONVERSION ELECTRON DETECTOR FOR MOSSBAUER SOURCE EXPERIMENTS

A vibration-free conversion electron detector has been constructed for Mossbauer source experiments with extremely low doping levels (approximately 1 ppm) of cobalt-57. While the overall efficiency is somewhat less than that of microfoil systems, the design is greatly simplified and it still yields more than a sixfold enhancement in signal-to-noise ratio over standard transmission methods. The lightweight detector (approximately 25 g) may be mounted directly on a conventional transducer without limiting the performance. This allows low-temperature source measurements to be made by moving the detector and fixing the sample/source in a cryostat. The overall linewidth (HWHM) of the detector is 0.16 mm/s with the broadening being due to saturation effects in the enriched foil.