Mössbauer spectrometer with YAlO₃:Ce scintillation crystal

A Mössbauer spectrometer has been developed using a mini transducer and a scintillation detector with a YAlO₃:Ce crystal. Data acquisition is realised via the PIGGY 32/154/320 microcontroller. Mössbauer spectra of 2048 channels can be accumulated in the constant acceleration or constant velocity modes. Pulse height spectra can be collected in the energy window scanning mode. The shape and amplitude of the velocity signal, the energy window of the single channel analyser, and the high voltage of the scintillation detector are controlled by the microcontroller. The velocity range is ±100 mm/s and the nonlinearity of the velocity scale is lower than 0.1%, while the maximum input count rate is as high as 10 MHz with a channel capacity of 2³² -1 counts.