Preventing Tritium Memory Effects in Ion Chambers Using Ultraviolet LEDs

Ion chambers (ICs) are often employed to measure the concentration of tritium within flowing gases. In real-world environments, active surfaces ICs become covered with tritiated surface contaminants. This contamination creates a large background response that can mask signs interest, which is in gas phase. Previous efforts reduce effects utilize inert coatings (e.g., gold) and low area electrodes wire mesh). These strategies only effect do not provide information regarding ratio current from contaminated volume detector. Additionally, gold coating expensive, substantially increasing cost instrument. While may be periodically cleaned, this recurring hands-on task does adequately address level ambiguities gloveboxes increases risk detector damage worker exposure. An ideal solution issue would either develop an IC accrue or one self-cleaning while it operation. report, we describe development using ultraviolet (UV) LED light illumination desorb they operation, preventing negative contamination.