Electronic – Can leaving a Geiger–Müller tube energized continuously cause it to wear out

geiger-muller-tubelifetimeradiationsensor

I recently acquired a Geiger counter to feed my ~~raging paranoia~~ curiosity.

However, I am wondering if it could harm the Geiger–Müller tube to leave it energized continuously?

I know a couple places (spark fun, for one) Have continuously operating Geiger tubes.

However, my understanding of how they work is that when the gas inside gets struck by a high-energy particle, it causes an ionization path to form between the electrodes. This makes me think that it might cause pitting and evaporation of the anode over time.

Do Geiger–Müller tubes wear out over time? And if so, what it the mechanism that causes the wear?

Best Answer

Best guess based on a Gargoyling skim consensus seems to be that

Lifetime is probably finite but largish.
Years to 10+ years of continuous operation in a non lethal environment seems very likely.
Modern tubes (since about 1950~) tend to be halogen quenched.
- Particle impacts cause destruction of quench targets BUT halogen recombines subsequently leading to semi-infinite life
Many references refer to "extended" life rather than infinite. Some older one say infinite.
Older organic quenched tubes had a lifetime of about 10^8 events. So you could expect a "longer life tube to have say 10^10+ events life.
1 year = 8765 hours =~~ 3 x 10^7 seconds. So:
- 1 year life at 10^10 events ~= 300+ events / second average.
- = 10 years at 30+ events/second.

A Gargoyle search using

geiger muller halogen quenched lifetime

produces results that look useful.

This is a 1957! paper that discusses the early days of Halogen quenched tubes. It thus tends to less gloss over things that may be taken for granted nowadays - and also he doesn't know things that nave been learned in the last 55 years :-). Useful and interesting though.
Firing cahatcteristics of halogen quenched Geiger muller tubes

1999 lab notes - but useful

Wow! 1972 Airforce Institute of Technology :-)
... investigation into ... short lifetime ...
No doubt pople havce long since come to grips with the problems described, but they give insight - lead solder reaction with Bromine and general Bromine attack causing depletion of the halogen quench gas.

Book Extract pages 103-104 especiall but generally fascinating

1960's halogen quenched tube:

Only passing relevance, but interest guaranteed :-)

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