Münster 2017 – scientific programme
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HK: Fachverband Physik der Hadronen und Kerne
HK 43: Astroparticle Physics II
HK 43.5: Talk
Thursday, March 30, 2017, 15:30–15:45, F 073
Prospects on radon mitigation using surface treatment techniques — •Florian Jörg, Hardy Simgen, and Guillaume Eurin — Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik (MPIK), Heidelberg, Germany
For experiments dedicated to the search for rare events, background control and its reduction are of crucial concern. Examples for these experiments are liquid xenon detectors searching for dark matter such as XENON1T. One of the biggest contributions to its background is due to 222Rn emanated from detector materials. Besides radon removal using liquid xenon distillation and selection of materials that emanate as little radon as possible, surface treatment can provide further improvement.
It has proven that the application of a coating of several hundreds of n m on the material surface can reduce the amount of radon emanation. Several coating techniques, such as plasma deposition and sputtering were considered in partnership with German companies. In addition, surface cleaning by enhanced electropolishing of several tens of µ m has been investigated. In order to determine the reduction factor on radon emanation, relative measurements before and after the application of surface treatment techniques are performed. Due to the very low expected activities, highly sensitive proportional counters and radon monitors were employed. In this talk, first promising results and prospects on radon mitigation will be presented.