Optimum Heating Technique'S In Etching Lr-115 Nuclear Track Detector

Several etching techniques; water bath, ultrasound cleaner and microwave oven-induced chemical etching solvent NaOH are employed to investigate the optimum device for etching latent alpha tracks recorded in LR-115 type II detector which previously irradiated by 226Ra alpha source for two duration 10 and 15s. Results found that microwave is the optimum etching technique, because of the highest track densities and the very short time required 6min to developed the tracks, which are 6212 and 8122 tracks/mm2 when the detector irradiated for 10 and 15s respectively. For water bath and ultrasound appeared at the same time 50min. The track densities for ultrasound were 7110 and 7353 tracks/mm2 when the detectors irradiated for 10 and 15s respectively. 5558 and 5718tracks/mm2 for water bath when the detectors irradiated for 10 and 15s respectively. The chemical etching parameters for the three techniques are determined, the sensitivity (V) of detector at irradiation time 10s found to be 7.436, 1.831 and 1.819, and 8.807, 2.109 and 1.997 at irradiation time 15s for microwave, ultrasound and water bath respectively. The etching efficiency (eta) using microwaving is twice the efficiency using water bath and ultrasound, where found 0.865, 0.454 and 0.451 at irradiation time 10s and 0.886, 0.526 and 0.499 at irradiation time 15s for microwave, ultrasound and water bath respectively.