Investigation of cross sections of reactions used in neutron activation analysis

Abstract

In this study, neutron incident reaction cross sections for some target nuclei such as Mg-24, Al-27, Si-28, Fe-56, and Cu-63 used in neutron activation analysis have been investigated. The new calculations on the excitation functions of Mg-24(n, p)Na-24, Al-27(n, p)Mg-27, Al-27(n, alpha)Na-24, Si-28(n, p)Al-28, Fe-56(n, p)Mn-56, and Cu-63(n,2n)Cu-62 reactions have been carried out for incident neutron energies up to 20 MeV. In these calculations, the pre-equilibrium and equilibrium effects have been investigated. The pre-equilibrium calculations involve the new geometry dependent hybrid model and the full exciton model. Equilibrium effects are calculated according to the Weisskopf-Ewing model. In the present work, reaction cross-sections have been calculated by using empirical formulas developed for energies of 14-15 MeV. The calculated results are discussed and compared with the experimental data taken from the EXFOR database.