Novel Technique for Ultra-Sensitive Determination of Trace Elements in Organic Scintillators

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KamLAND
low background
neutrino oscillations
NAA
trace element
liquid scintillator
Nuclear Engineering
Operational Research
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Djurcic, Zelimir
Glasgow, D.
hu, Lin-wen
McKeown, R.D.
Piepke, Andreas
Swinney, Robert
Tipton, B.
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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.

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2003-07-21
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Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment
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