Liquid scintillation counter characterization, optimization and benzene purity correction

Abstract

In liquid scintillation counting (LSC), small variations in benzene purity can cause 14C pulse-height spectra to move with respect to the counting window. Thus, one must carefully monitor the purity of each benzene sample and apply corrections for spectral shifts. I describe here the techniques used at Queen's Univeristy Belfast for deriving correction factors for observed small variations in benzene purity. I also describe the methods used at our laboratory to fine-tune our Quantulus LS counters for high-precision dating. -from Author