Characterization of XIA UltraLo-1800 Response to Measuring Charged Samples

Commercial alpha counters are used in science and industry applications to screen materials for surface radon progeny contamination. In this paper, we characterize an XIA UltraLo-1800, an ionization drift alpha counter, and study the response to embedded charge in polyethylene sample measurements. We show that modeling such effects is possible in a Geant4-based simulation framework and attempt to derive corrections. This paper also demonstrates the effectiveness of the use of an anti-static fan to eliminate the embedded charge and recover a 97.73% alpha detection efficiency in the alpha counter.