Recording X-ray spectra with an audio digitizer

摘要

X-ray spectra were recorded with a notebook computer and analyzed by software on,the computer, without a pulse height analyzer (PHA) or a digital signal processor (DSP). An audio (microphone or line) input on a personal computer has a built-in analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) for digital audio recording. The output signal of the X-ray detector is recorded through the audio input of the computer and then analyzed by software on the computer. On the basis of this method, X-rays from a radium source were measured with a cadmium telluride detector. K X-rays of bismuth were detected. Full width at half maximum (FWHM) was 5.6 keV at Kα of bismuth (77. 1 keV), enough to separate Kβ (87.3 keV) from Kα of bismuth. The present method achieved almost equal energy resolution as that of the regular method (5.3 keV FWHM at 77.1 keV).