Muons: New analytical possibilities for industry at large-scale facilities

01.06.2023
ANAXAM together with colleagues from PSI have successfully exploited for a specific question of an industrial customer the usage of the Muon Induced X-ray Emission (MIXE) technique for elemental analysis of welding samples.
Muons
Cynthia Chang (ANAXAM) and Sayani Biswas (PSI) standing in front of the GermanIum Array for Non-destructive Testing (GIANT) setup at Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) used for applied physics research.

Muon Induced X-ray Emission (MIXE) is a technique which has recently gained importance in the field of applied sciences with the advancement of large-scale accelerator facilities. It is a non-destructive technique with access to the bulk of a sample (up to a few centimeters) and depth-profiling capabilities (with a min. depth resolution of about 50 μm) in addition to being sensitive to all the elements in the periodic table with Z > 1 (if the concentration is larger than about 0.1 wt%). This technique involves the bombardment of a sample of interest with a negative muon beam. Depending on the momentum of the beam and the density of the material, the muons stop at a particular depth inside the material, where it is captured by an atom to form a so-called muonic atom. A muonic atom eventually emit high-energy muonic X-rays and gamma rays (with an energy up to a few MeV), which are detected using a setup consisting of high-purity germanium detectors.

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