Effects of Ultrasound in Etching and Detecting Parameters of CR-39 Detector

Effect of 40 kHz ultrasound (US) in chemical etching of alpha-particle tracks in CR-39 solid state nuclear track detector were investigated. Alpha-particle irradiations (using 1 μCi ^241Am source) were made with different energies under normal incidence. All track etch rates VD, VB, VT and V increased, but the critical angle of the detector θC decreased. The maximum increase in the bulk etch rate VB, the track s diameter growing rate VD, the etch rate ratio V, the etching efficiency η and sensitivity S were about 12% , 20%, 25%, 12.5% and 27.2%, respectively, while the decrease in the critical angle was about 15.2%. These results were in agreement with those found by [1, 2]. A minimum detection threshold energy of alphaparticle ~0.2 MeV was recorded.