Novel technique for ultra-sensitive determination of trace elements in organic scintillators

Z. Djurcic, D. Glasgow, L. W. Hu, R. D. McKeown, A. Piepke, R. Swinney, B. Tipton

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

4 Scopus citations

Abstract

A technique based on neutron activation has been developed for an extremely high sensitivity analysis of trace elements in organic materials. Organic materials are sealed in plastic or high-purity quartz and irradiated at the HFIR and MITR. The most volatile materials such as liquid scintillator (LS) are first preconcentrated by clean vacuum evaporation. Activities of interest are separated from side activities by acid digestion and ion exchange. The technique has been applied to study the liquid scintillator used in the KamLAND neutrino experiment. Detection limits of <2.4 × 10-15 g 40K/g LS, <5.5 × 10-15 g Th/g LS, and <8 × 10-15 g U/g LS have been achieved.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)680-690
Number of pages11
JournalNuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research, Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
Volume507
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - Jul 21 2003

Funding

This work was supported in part by the US Department of Energy and the US–Japan Committee for Cooperation in High Energy Physics. The authors would like to thank S.J. Freedman, K.T. Lesko, Y. Kamyshkov, A. Suzuki, and J. Webb for help during the critical early phase of this project. The authors appreciate the advice and assistance of K. Farley, J. Goreva, L. Hedges, and G. Wasserburg during the ICPMS studies. We would also like to thank the KamLAND collaboration for their support.

Keywords

  • KamLAND
  • Liquid scintillator
  • Low background
  • NAA
  • Neutrino oscillations
  • Trace element

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