Preliminary experiment of the controllable Am–Be neutron source based on composite polymeric membrane

A controllable Am–Be neutron source was designed based on a hamburger structure including two Be pallets and a composite polymeric membrane carrying 241 Am. The composite polymeric membrane was made of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA). PVDF polymeric membrane was used as the base film to load the mixed Am(NO 3 ) 3 -PVA solution, which was coated on the PVDF polymeric membrane. The thickness of two layers was both about 5 μm. The correlative calculations were performed using the Geant4 code. A piece of composite membrane loading 241 Am of 2.13 × 10 6 Bq was placed in the middle of two Be pallets just like a hamburger. Neutrons were produced continuously until the composite membrane was separated from Be pallets. The neutron yield of the controllable hamburger neutron source was measured as 54 n/(10 6 α), which was 15.6 % lower than the calculation value.