Activation foils are an important tool for the characterization of neutron fields. Some of the materials that are used in these foils have large interaction cross-sections that cause unwanted self-shielding effects. In practice experimenters minimize these effects by using aluminium alloys. An alternative approach can be a nanocoating of a pure material on a carrier. The validity of this approach is investigated in this work. Nanocoatings can be more flexible compared to alloys and can probably reduce the number of required post-irradiation gamma spectrometry measurements.

Cobalt and silver nanocoatings were deposited by physical vapour deposition on nickel and aluminium carrier foils. The nanocoatings were tested in two irradiation campaigns in the Belgian Reactor 1 at SCK CEN. By depositing nanocoatings with different thickness and determining the corresponding number of activated atoms the inherent flexibility of the technique is demonstrated.

When the dosimeters were punched from the carrier foils, the metal cylindrical punch damaged the nanocoatings which increased the spread on the number of atoms between different dosimeters. This is prevented by including a Ti interlayer of 5 nm between the carrier and the cobalt and silver layers. It was shown that this results in a coating with good homogeneity or minimal spread.

This study shows that applying nanocoatings on a carrier is a valid technique to make dosimeters.

活化箔是表征中子场的重要工具。这些箔中使用的一些材料具有较大的相互作用横截面，会导致不需要的自屏蔽效应。在实践中，实验者通过使用铝合金来最大限度地减少这些影响。另一种方法可以是在载体上的纯材料纳米涂层。在这项工作中研究了这种方法的有效性。与合金相比，纳米涂层可以更灵活，并且可能会减少所需的辐照后伽马光谱测量的数量。

钴和银纳米涂层通过物理气相沉积沉积在镍和铝载体箔上。纳米涂层在 SCK CEN 的比利时反应器 1 中的两次辐照活动中进行了测试。通过沉积不同厚度的纳米涂层并确定相应数量的活​​化原子，该技术的固有灵活性得到了证明。

当剂量计从载体箔上冲压出来时，金属圆柱冲头会损坏纳米涂层，这增加了不同剂量计之间原子数量的分布。这可以通过在载体与钴和银层之间包括 5 nm 的 Ti 中间层来防止。结果表明，这导致涂层具有良好的均匀性或最小的扩散。

这项研究表明，在载体上应用纳米涂层是制造剂量计的有效技术。