Development of ion chambers for the measurement of low energy synchrotron radiation

Measurement of radiation fields due to low energy synchrotron radiation (SR) needs special considerations. The photoelectric interactions, which are mainly responsible for signal generation in this case, result in electron emission in a direction nearly perpendicular to the direction of incident photon. A free air ionisation chamber was designed and used for measurement of intensity of SR in the beam line and a methodology has been developed to measure SR fields away from the beam line using large volume ion chambers. Studies with spherical and cylindrical ion chambers in X-ray beams obtained at a tube potential of 15 kV (3 mm Be inherent filtration) showed that the chamber sensitivity at low energy strongly depended on curvature of the chamber wall especially in thick walled chambers. Our studies further showed that large volume thin and plane walled (0.01 mm thick aluminium wall) chambers could be used for measurement of SR fields away from the beam lines, with reasonably good accuracy (±10%) by calibrating them against the free air ion chamber through a similar chamber of smaller dimensions.