Determination of Atomic Number Exponent for Elemental Absorber at Am– 241 Energy in X–Ray Attenuation Experiments

Abstract

In X-ray absorption experiment, the dependence of the photoelectric absorption cross-section
varied with atomic number Z. In this paper, the dependence on Z of the cross – section or
coefficient of photoelectric absorption is first evaluated from published data for (20) elements
ranging from Al–Sn, and then the cross–section for Fe is obtained experimentally by measuring the
X-ray intensity with and without the Fe absorber and compared with the theoretical value, the
variation of the photoelectric absorption coefficient (μ/ρm) showed less dependence on Z for the two
tested of Z regions. This is because of the inclusion of mass density (ρm) of the absorber in the
coefficient. The values of m obtained in the present work increases linearly with energy for both
ranges of elements.