Application of the semi-analytical BIXS method to tritium analysis in titanium tritide: A feasibility and...

This study applies the previously proposed semi-analytical β-ray Induced X-ray Spectrometry (BIXS) method to the analysis of titanium tritide samples to test the feasibility and reconstruction accuracy of the semi-analytical BIXS method. The semi-analytical BIXS method and the full Monte Carlo (MC) BIXS method were employed to generate the X-ray spectra (including external bremsstrahlung, characteristic X-rays, and internal bremsstrahlung) induced by the β-decay of tritium atoms in titanium and reconstruct the tritium depth profile and tritium contents. The semi-analytical method successfully generated the semi-analytical X-ray spectra from tritium β-decay for individual tritium-containing layer, showing good agreement with MC simulated X-ray spectra, with a total count difference of approximately 1.0%. Furthermore, The Tikhonov regularization method was employed for the reconstruction of the tritium depth profiles, utilizing both semi-analytical and full MC-generated X-ray spectra as kernel functions. The reconstructed depth profiles by the two methods indicated an approximately uniform distribution of tritium over the titanium tritide layer, and the results also revealed that the total difference in tritium activity obtained from the two methods were less than 1.38%. Comparing with the full MC BIXS, these findings validate the feasibility and reconstruction accuracy of the semi-analytical BIXS method for the tritium activity and tritium depth profiles analysis used in titanium tritide samples.