Radon (Rn) and its decay daughters are a well-known source of background in direct WIMP detection experiments, as either a Rn decay daughter or an alpha particle emitted from a thin inner surface layer of a detector could produce a WIMP-like signal. Different surface treatment and cleaning techniques have been employed in the past to remove this type of contamination. A new method of dealing with the problem has been proposed and used for a prototype acrylic DEAP-1 detector. Inner surfaces of the detector were coated with a layer of ultra pure acrylic, meant to shield the active volume from alphas and recoiling nuclei. An acrylic purification technique and two coating techniques are described: a solvent-borne (tested on DEAP-1) and solvent-less (being developed for the full scale DEAP-3600 detector).
Cite
@article{arxiv.1209.4928,
title = {Acrylic purification and coatings},
author = {Marcin Kuźniak},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1209.4928},
year = {2012}
}
Comments
Proceedings of Topical Workshop on Low Radioactivity Techniques (LRT 2010), SNOLAB, Sudbury, Canada, Aug 28-29, 2010